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St. Mungos - 2000 - Severus

Severus Snape opened his eyes to whitewashed walls and the quiet, sterile hum of St Mungo’s Hospital. Light filtered gently through a charmed window, crafted to mimic daylight even when the sky outside was heavy with clouds. Everything around him was subdued and clinical, yet inside, unrest curled through him like smoke in a sealed room—thick, choking, impossible to ignore. The silence was not peaceful but suffocating, his thoughts echoing with jagged fragments of all he had lost and the unbearable reality of still being here. He took in a slow, careful breath, feeling as though each lungful of air carried the crushing weight of survival—a survival he had never wished for, never asked to be granted.

His mind was a muddled tangle, a fractured tapestry of memories that lingered just beyond clarity’s reach. Snatches of chaos—the flash of a snake’s fangs, the nauseating sting of venom burning through his veins, the endless swirl of voices echoing faintly in the space between life and death—hung like shadows behind his eyes. And beneath it all, a persistent, aching bitterness rose like bile, choking him, robbing him of relief at being alive.

Alive. The very word felt like a mockery.

A healer soon arrived, expression carefully neutral, movements measured as she checked his vitals with practiced efficiency. Severus said nothing, his tongue thick and unwilling, throat raw from prolonged disuse. He observed her dispassionately, a hollow feeling settling deeper into his bones. Perhaps this numbness was mercy after all.

The healer gently explained what his body had endured: nerve damage from Nagini's bite, a lingering brain injury that had swollen dangerously, forcing them into a magical coma—a slumber that had stolen eighteen months of his existence. It had protected him, preserved him in some fragile balance between living and dying. But that balance had now tilted, leaving him weak, muscles atrophied, legs useless until potent potions and rigorous magical therapy could repair the damage.

A wheelchair. The healer’s cautious, sympathetic explanation reverberated painfully in his skull. The news was not merely bitter; it felt like a cruel joke, a punishment for daring to survive the horrors of war. Severus closed his eyes again, briefly, in grim resignation.

The healer hesitated for a long moment, as though weighing whether to speak at all. Severus, disinterested and still half-numb, paid her no mind. Whatever it was, it would likely be another indignity. But she remained silent on the matter of visitors, offering no names, no explanations—only a glance that lingered a little too long before she turned and left.

He was too exhausted to care. Too hollow to question. Whoever might've been summoned was surely irrelevant. No one would come. No one should.

He opened his eyes again, gaze fixed on the cracked plaster of the ceiling, a dark, humourless smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Why should it surprise him? She had always been impossibly determined, far too intelligent for her own good, unwilling to let sleeping beasts lie. Of course, she would insist on dragging him back from death's peaceful embrace into this living nightmare of broken limbs and shattered pride.

The healer slipped quietly from the room, leaving Severus alone once more in that heavy silence. The bitter solitude pressed in from every corner, filled with shadows and ghosts he could not yet face. He had expected—had welcomed—death, but instead found himself trapped within this useless, damaged shell. Once, he had commanded fear, precision, respect. Now he could barely lift his limbs, the strength and sharpness that had once defined him stripped away, leaving behind a frail, dependent thing that scarcely resembled the man he used to be. Anger coiled tightly in his chest, but beneath that anger was a deep, aching emptiness. An emptiness that whispered that perhaps he deserved this fate, this punishment for his countless sins.

He breathed again, slowly, deliberately, the air tasting faintly antiseptic. Eighteen months had passed, and the war had ended, but peace had never felt more distant.

Severus stared at the door and waited for Hermione Granger’s inevitable arrival, knowing full well she would come, relentless and determined as always. He wondered bitterly if she understood what she had saved, or rather, what she had condemned him to become. The man he had once been—the spy, the soldier, the martyr—was gone, leaving only a hollow shadow behind.

As he lay there, staring unseeing at the blank hospital wall, Severus realised grimly that surviving the war was not the same as living. He had survived, yes. But in that moment, alone and broken, he was unsure if he would ever truly live again.

Australia - 2000 - Hermione 

Hermione had learned early on that victory was not always triumphant. Sometimes, victory was hollow; a bitter aftertaste lingering long after the celebrations faded, leaving behind only silence and memory. The war had been won, Voldemort had fallen, yet the echoes of screams and the weight of too many lifeless bodies were etched permanently into her bones. They’d been children forced to grow up too fast, forced to bury friends, forced to hold their grief tight behind strained smiles for the camera flashes and hopeful speeches. After all, the Wizarding World wanted heroes—not broken teenagers with dark-circled eyes and shaking hands.

She had stayed as long as she could bear, lingering in the wreckage, forcing herself to be the anchor for others, until even breathing became a burden. Harry had understood, quietly and deeply, but even he hid behind stoicism, his own pain a secret carried beneath brave smiles. Ron had withdrawn, sinking deeper into himself, quiet and lost after Fred. They were survivors, but nobody really survived intact. Hermione had known she was drowning, yet every hand that reached for her seemed only intent on pulling her toward some bright, impossible normality. But there was no normal—not after what they’d seen, what they’d endured.

And so, after six months of barely holding together, after nights spent biting pillows to muffle screams, waking covered in sweat, haunted by their ghosts, Hermione had fled Britain. She'd run as far and as fast as she could from the pitying eyes, from the quiet murmurs about healing and moving on. Australia had promised something gentler—a chance to reclaim the only piece of innocence left: her parents. Hermione had imagined their warm embrace, had clung desperately to the image of forgiveness in their eyes. But she had arrived too late. The neat, white marble gravestone had shattered what remained of her heart: Wendell and Wilma Wilkins—the names she had conjured to protect them, now chiseled into stone with cruel finality. Her knees buckled beneath her as she collapsed to the sun-bleached earth, fingers trembling against the polished marble. The air was too warm, too bright, the scent of eucalyptus sharp in her nose as her vision blurred. She pressed her forehead to the stone, whispering apologies that the wind carried away unanswered. names she had crafted to protect them, now etched in stone as though they had never been anything else.

Drunk driver, the neighbours had said quietly, shaking their heads sympathetically. Hermione had stood numb and hollow beneath the bright Australian sun, grief sharper than any blade, and realised she had lost them long before the car had struck. She had killed them herself, obliviating their memories, stealing their lives. That was when Hermione understood: there would be no absolution, only guilt and an ache too profound for words.

She had stayed anyway, burying herself in the intricate demands of academia—Potions mastery first, drawn to its exacting nature and precision, a controlled art in a world that had spun wildly out of her grasp. Then Necromancy and Death Magic, not out of morbid curiosity, but in the desperate hope of understanding the thin, cruel veil that had taken so many. She wanted answers. She wanted power—not in the political sense, but the ability to keep death at bay, to unravel its laws, to unmake the helplessness that had defined the war. Each subject was a sanctuary, a shield against memory, against sorrow, against the persistent belief that she had not done enough.

Until an unfamiliar owl found her, cutting through nearly two years of deliberate silence—years where she had buried her identity beneath textbooks and silence, where even her own reflection felt like a stranger—years where she had severed every tie to Britain, every reminder of the war, every voice that might call her back.

She had stared blankly at the parchment in trembling hands, the words blurring before she forced herself to read them again.

" Severus Snape is awake. You are listed as his emergency contact. Please return immediately to St Mungo's."

Her heart had stumbled violently in her chest, breath catching painfully in her throat. Snape—another ghost, another shadow. Another impossible choice she’d made in the darkness. She'd saved him out of instinct, out of sheer stubborn defiance of death’s claim, never expecting him to survive. And now here he was, awake and alone, with only her name tethering him to this world.

Within days, she’d packed her few belongings, boarded a Portkey back to Britain, heart pounding and palms damp with dread. Grimmauld Place was as she’d left it—empty, silent, full of memories that still lingered like phantoms in the shadows. Harry had left the house to her, hoping to give her something like a home. Yet nothing had changed; she had not the strength to face it then, and now the place felt even emptier than before, echoing with the ghosts of those who once laughed within its walls.

The day she returned to St Mungo's, Hermione steeled herself, expecting anger, bitterness, and resentment from Severus Snape. She knew nothing of the extent of his injuries, the torment he'd endured, the helplessness that awaited him. As she moved through the sterile halls of the hospital, each step felt heavier, harder, as though chains bound her feet.

She had no answers, no comfort to offer, no justification for the pain she’d prolonged by dragging him from the brink of death. All she had was herself—a woman worn thin by loss, haunted by guilt, and desperate for redemption.

Outside his door, she paused, fingers brushing hesitantly against cool wood, breath shuddering from her lungs. She was terrified, unsure what awaited her beyond the door, uncertain of whether she deserved forgiveness or merely contempt. Hermione closed her eyes briefly, steadying herself against the wave of panic that threatened to pull her under.

She took a deep breath and knocked, softly, gently, an apology already forming in her throat, a prayer on her lips that perhaps, just perhaps, they might find solace in the shared agony of survival.

St. Mungos - 2000 - Severus

By the time his mind began registering the world again, Severus moved more out of rote memory than any desire to heal. He obeyed commands without acknowledgment, swallowed potions without complaint, and stared blankly at the walls like they might someday offer an escape. Healers came and went, voices murmuring around him like water behind glass. But the nights betrayed him—twisted with half-remembered faces, war-cries, the taste of blood and smoke. He awoke soaked in sweat, breathing hard into a room too quiet to hold the horrors that clung to him.

The Dreamless Sleep potion was pushed on him soon after. Not to aid healing, but to sedate. To silence. He welcomed its blankness. Better the muted dark than the jagged silence of his own mind. Better the empty hush than the ghost of the war waiting behind his eyelids.

Eventually, a timid young mediwitch appeared at his bedside, nervously shifting from foot to foot. Severus barely glanced at her, his gaze still fixed on the cracked ceiling plaster as she stammered out something about an "emergency contact" being informed. His response—a sharp, contemptuous sneer—was enough to send her fleeing from the room in mortified panic. An emergency contact? The idea was absurd; he had no one left, no one alive who would willingly claim any connection to him. The very notion was laughable and cruel. Who, in Merlin’s name, had they summoned to torment him further?

Days slipped past in indistinguishable monotony, punctuated only by potions forced down his throat and whispered conversations around him. Severus had begun to think that perhaps the mediwitch had misspoken, or the mysterious contact had wisely chosen to ignore the summons. He felt hollow, distant, drifting in a strange limbo between life and death, unable to truly feel or care about anything. Perhaps this was his punishment: to exist without purpose, to survive without meaning.

Yet, three days after the mediwitch's announcement, the door opened softly, and Severus’s listless gaze flickered briefly towards the figure standing hesitantly in the doorway. Recognition sparked instantly, a bitter, twisted irony tugging at his insides. Hermione Granger stood there, framed by the sterile white walls, her bushy hair wild and unkempt as ever. Her eyes met his—dark, hollow, filled with grief—and he recognised his own reflection there, mirrored in her haunted expression.

She looked different than he remembered, though perhaps it was simply the weight of despair that had etched itself into her features, stripping away the brightness and innocence she once carried. Her presence ignited a fierce resentment within him. Granger. Of course, it was Granger. He could almost smell the faint trace of old parchment and lavender that always clung to her robes—a scent tied to endless corridors, library hushed tones, and relentless questioning. The name alone stirred something bitter in him, not just because of her meddling, but because deep down, he had always known she wouldn’t let him go. Not even now. The meddling girl who had dragged him back from the edge of death, who’d selfishly refused to let him escape his burdens. He wanted to hate her for it, wanted to rage at her for condemning him to this life—but the emotion was too weary, too dulled by the overwhelming numbness that held him captive.

For a long moment, neither spoke. Silence stretched tautly between them, charged with unspoken grief and quiet anguish. Severus watched as Hermione took a careful, hesitant step into the room, her fingers trembling slightly as they brushed nervously against her thigh. He could almost taste the anxiety radiating from her, yet she did not turn away. She merely stood there, quietly assessing him, waiting for a cue, for something he could not give.

"Why are you here?" Severus finally rasped, his voice hoarse from disuse, bitter and rough around the edges. The words scraped painfully from his throat, leaving rawness in their wake. Hermione flinched almost imperceptibly at his tone, yet held her ground, her jaw lifting stubbornly, eyes fixed resolutely on his face.

"Because you have no one else," she said quietly, the honesty in her voice soft yet cutting, leaving no room for argument or denial. "And neither do I."

Severus felt something twist painfully in his chest—a sharp, unexpected pang of recognition. He looked away abruptly, unable to bear the intensity in her eyes, unable to face the truth reflected there. It was not comfort, nor forgiveness, nor absolution she offered; it was merely understanding, recognition of shared wounds and mutual desolation.

He hated himself for the ache of relief he felt in that moment. He resented her fiercely for offering it so freely, for daring to break through the numbness that had become his sole protection. But he knew, as he closed his eyes against the harsh truth of her words, that he had no strength left to push her away. After all, who was left in the world to understand the depth of his wounds, if not Hermione Granger—the girl who had stubbornly refused to let him die?

St. Mongos - 2000 - Hermione

Hermione slowly crossed the hospital room, feeling Severus's intense, onyx gaze following her every hesitant step. She moved carefully, as though approaching a wounded animal—aware that one misstep could startle him or break whatever fragile peace lingered between them. Her heart pounded uncomfortably in her chest, each beat a painful reminder of just how uncertain and unsteady their reunion was. She lowered herself gingerly into the chair beside his bed, the silence stretching thin and delicate between them.

Severus watched her quietly, eyes unreadable but undeniably focused. Hermione knew he would resent her presence, resent that she had saved him—especially since he'd never asked to be saved. He'd made his peace, and she'd robbed him of it. And yet, as she finally summoned the courage to meet his gaze, she was unprepared for what she found there: pity. It cut deeper than anger or resentment could have. Severus Snape saw through her defences, reading the loneliness she had buried beneath layers of independence and scholarly achievement.

"Because you have no one else," she finally said softly, breaking the oppressive quiet. Her voice was firm yet fragile, leaving no space for argument. "And neither do I."

Severus tilted his head slightly, arching one eyebrow in that familiar, sardonic manner that had once intimidated her. His voice, when he spoke, was neither warm nor cold—simply observant. "Well, that is a tad dramatic, Miss Granger. Surely Mr. Potter—"

Hermione shook her head quickly, cutting him off gently but firmly. "He’s getting married," she murmured, her voice low, eyes dropping to her hands. She twisted them nervously in her lap, focusing on the repetitive motion rather than the sharp ache of isolation in her chest. Harry would have stood by her, unquestionably, had she asked him—but she couldn't. After everything he'd sacrificed, Harry deserved peace, happiness, a chance at normality. She refused to drag him back into her storm. "He deserves to be happy," she added softly, almost to herself.

"Mr. Weasley, then," Severus suggested, a cautious gentleness in his tone, as if aware of treading on delicate ground. Hermione felt his eyes penetrating her carefully constructed barriers.

"I haven't spoken to Ron in two years," Hermione admitted quietly, bitterness twisting in her throat. "Not since I left."

A heavy silence enveloped them once again, punctuated only by the distant footsteps and murmured conversations from the corridor outside. Hermione shifted slightly in her seat, deeply uncomfortable with how easily she had exposed herself to Severus’s scrutiny. She knew that once said, her loneliness could never be fully hidden again. Her thumbs fidgeted restlessly as she searched desperately for some distraction, brushing imaginary dust off her jeans, avoiding the intensity of his gaze.

Finally, she cleared her throat, breaking the silence with effort. "Harry left Grimmauld to me," she offered hesitantly, as if extending a lifeline she wasn't sure he’d accept. "That's… that's the only thing I have to offer you right now."

When she dared to glance up again, Severus responded with a brief, stiff nod, his lips pressed together in a thin line. There was no rejection, no disdain—just quiet acknowledgment. Emboldened slightly, Hermione felt words tumble unbidden from her lips. "I finished my Mastery in Potions… and in Necromancy and Death Magic," she said, unsure why she’d felt compelled to share it. Perhaps she still sought validation from the man whose approval had always mattered more than she ever admitted, or perhaps the silence was simply too suffocating to bear.

Severus let out a soft snort of amusement, unexpected yet oddly comforting. "I suppose we will need two potion labs at Grimmauld," he drawled slowly, voice edged with something close to genuine interest. Hermione's head shot up in surprise, her eyes meeting his again. He was watching her with an expression bordering on curiosity, the faintest of smirks tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Despite herself, Hermione smiled faintly in response, a warmth blooming quietly in her chest. For the first time since she had set foot back in Britain, something akin to hope stirred gently within her, fragile and tentative yet undeniably present. Perhaps they could find common ground in their solitude, in their mutual understanding of loss and loneliness. Perhaps the ruins they had both become could offer one another something no one else could—a shared, if reluctant, companionship built on mutual scars and unspoken empathy.

She leaned back slightly, breathing a bit more easily. Yet the tranquillity of the moment soon gave way to a renewed anxiety. Her gaze flickered across the sterile room, lingering on the array of potions, the neatly folded blankets, the stark emptiness that spoke volumes of the days he had spent alone. It echoed her own solitary years spent in academic exile, nights filled with restless dreams, days immersed in studies that promised understanding yet provided little comfort.

Hermione drew in a shaky breath, forcing herself to speak again. "The healers mentioned you'll need extensive rehabilitation. The nerve damage from Nagini’s venom is severe. They...they weren't sure how much could be restored."

Severus merely nodded, his expression betraying nothing, yet Hermione sensed a quiet tension beneath his composed exterior. "I'm aware," he said simply, the sharpness in his tone betraying just enough vulnerability to tighten her chest.

She bit her lip, hesitant but determined. "I'll help you. Whatever you need," she promised, voice resolute despite the trembling beneath it. "If you’ll let me."

He studied her carefully, as though weighing the sincerity of her offer against the cost of accepting it. Finally, after a silence that seemed endless, he gave another slight, almost imperceptible nod. "I find myself lacking the luxury of pride, Miss Granger."

Hermione allowed herself to release the breath she'd been holding, feeling strangely relieved by his blunt honesty. She stood slowly, the tension in her muscles easing somewhat, replaced by cautious determination. "Then let's get you home," she said softly, her voice steadier than she felt.

For now, she allowed herself the smallest moment of optimism. The path ahead was uncertain and complicated—but for the first time, she realised, she didn't have to walk it entirely alone.

St. Mungos - 2000 - Severus

Severus had never been one for idle observation—he preferred conclusions drawn from quiet analysis, facts compiled with clinical detachment. But in the weeks that followed his unexpected return to the land of the living, he found himself studying Hermione Granger with a quiet intensity that unnerved him. Her presence was both constant and unsettling—like a rhythm just out of sync, never jarring, but always enough to keep him aware persistent enough to anchor him to the moment but unsettling in its unrelenting rhythm.

Not because he had any right to her, or even because he particularly wanted to. But because, in the sterile purgatory of St Mungo’s, she was the only anchor in a world that no longer felt familiar. The healers came and went, armed with false cheer and endless charts, pressing phials of foul-tasting draughts against his lips, each potion fouler than the last. They treated him as an artefact rather than a man—part experiment, part relic. But Hermione—Hermione remained. A quiet, unwavering presence in a world that had become too sharp and too sterile. In the antiseptic monotony of St Mungo’s, she carried the scent of ink and parchment and something subtly floral—familiar in a way that slipped beneath his defences before he could brace against it.

She was not soft or tentative. She asked precise questions, sometimes sharper than the Healers themselves, her mind as exacting as ever. But she smiled through it all, even when her mouth twitched with exhaustion. Every day, she arrived. And every day, she pretended she wasn’t falling apart.

He saw it all, of course. He had always been a master of noticing the things people tried to hide. Even dulled by pain and potion fatigue, Severus was not blind. Most days she wore long-sleeved blouses, buttoned at the wrist and carefully pressed, but on the rare mornings she didn’t—on the mornings where exhaustion or indifference overtook her routine—he caught glimpses of a faint glamour on her arm. A tremor in her left hand when she poured water from the pitcher. A hiss she tried to hide when lifting something too quickly. The way her fingers clenched during sleep.

Her under-eye circles were dark, purple-tinged crescents that deepened by the day. She startled at every sharp sound—metal trays clinking, a healer coughing too suddenly, the scrape of a chair leg against the floor. Her wand was always on her. Not beside her. Not nearby. On her. Tucked up her sleeve, fingers twitching toward it like a soldier in enemy territory.

She never sat still. She paced the room with restless urgency, like a soldier trapped in friendly territory, waiting for the next ambush. Wore heavy clothes in summer and made excuses for everything—too cold, she claimed, or simply liked the fabric. But Severus had seen war. He knew the symptoms. The haunted look behind her eyes. The way she drew herself smaller when someone entered the room unexpectedly. The way she clung to his chart and memorised every line of medical jargon not because she had to—but because if she didn’t, she might unravel.

Some mornings her eyes were red and swollen. Others, they were as empty as a grave. Hollowed out, as though she were still waiting to be filled by something long gone. But she wore a mask made of polite smiles and perfectly timed nods. She listened carefully when the Healers explained his treatment, asked clarifying questions, took notes. But he saw it all: the subtle tremors, the flinching, the crack in her voice that no one else noticed.

It had taken him only days to piece it together. PTSD. Depression. Acute anxiety. Not theoretical. Not textbook. Real. Visible. Palpable. And the fact that no one—no one—had intervened? That shattered something inside him. Something cold and hard and useless. He had spent a lifetime learning to compartmentalise pain, to mask his emotions, to keep the world at a distance. And yet here was this girl—this woman—wearing every one of his coping mechanisms like second skin. Not because she wanted to. Because she had no choice.

He didn’t understand why she came, why she lingered like something constant and steady in the ever-shifting fog of his recovery. She had nothing to gain from it—no gratitude, no assurance of warmth, no redemption for past regrets—and yet, each morning she returned, never wavering. It unsettled him more than he cared to admit. He didn’t deserve that kind of loyalty. Not from her. Not from anyone.

She had saved him—yes—but he had spent a long time resenting her for it. And he still did, some nights. When the pain was sharp and sleep eluded him. When his legs refused to respond and the memories crawled into bed beside him. But the resentment had dulled with each passing day, chipped away by her presence. She came not out of obligation, and certainly not out of pity. She came because she cared.

He wasn’t prepared for that. He had braced for revulsion, for guilt, for stiff formalities. But Hermione Granger—his former student, the know-it-all he had once mocked—spoke to him like an equal. Treated him with dignity. Laughed in his room. Argued with healers on his behalf. He did not know what to do with her.

He wanted to hate her. He tried. Truly, he did. He clung to the memory of her insufferable hand always raised in his classroom, her precise answers that sounded too much like challenges, her unshakable faith in people who never deserved it. He remembered her defiance, the questions she dared to ask when silence would have served her better. But those memories now seemed brittle, pale echoes of a girl who had grown into someone far more complex—and infinitely harder to despise. But each time she entered and found him sitting upright, wand in hand or book in lap, she beamed. That smile—bright, sincere, unguarded—unmade him. It was not a smile of obligation. It was pride. Pure and unfiltered.

It scared the hell out of him, the way she looked at him—not with pity or obligation, but with something painfully close to belief. That smile, bright and unguarded, stirred something so foreign in him it left his defences crumbling before he had time to fortify them. He, who had lived decades behind cold walls and sharper words, who had survived on bitterness and guilt and well-worn cynicism, now found himself undone by the gentle, unspoken hope in her gaze. It was not admiration that shook him—he could have dismissed that as naivety—it was trust. The trust of someone who had seen him at his worst and had not flinched. And it frightened him in a way that Dark Lords and war never had, because if he allowed himself to lean into that trust, to believe he could be something more than a shadow stitched together by penance and pain, he wasn’t sure he’d know how to survive the fall if it ever left him. It was easier, always, to expect the withdrawal, the turning away. But she hadn’t turned. Not yet. And that terrified him most of all.

And still, he found himself craving it. Waiting for it. That bloody smile. That damned light in her eyes. When she told him how she’d destroyed Walburga Black’s portrait with a sledgehammer—no spells, no curses, just Muggle brute force—he had stared in astonishment. She had burned the remnants in the garden, doused them in firewhisky, and toasted the flames in Sirius Black’s honour. The tale had made her laugh so hard she’d had to sit.

Severus had never admired anyone more in that moment.

He had shut his eyes and imagined her in jeans and trainers, soot on her cheeks, swinging a hammer into centuries of blood-soaked arrogance. She had walked into that house and broken it open. Freed it. Freed him, too.

And he? He’d been strapped to a bed—limbs leaden, mind clouded, breath dragging shallow and uncertain through lungs that felt foreign in his own body. His skin had itched with the stillness of convalescence, the suffocating sensation of being conscious yet immobile, of being watched yet untouched. He had been kept alive by charms and potions, tethered to a reality he had no desire to return to, his dignity leeched away with each bruising reposition, each whispered diagnostic muttered just beyond his hearing. Half-alive didn’t capture the truth of it. He had existed in a liminal space—between life and memory, between healing and hollowness—decayed not in flesh, but in identity. He had become something lesser than himself. And all the while, she had been out there, breaking curses and portrait frames, burning history and making space for a life he no longer knew how to want.

But it wasn’t self-pity that clung to him. It was something older. Regret, bitter and unrelenting, like a whisper that haunted the edges of silence. It was the kind of regret that didn’t scream or wail but sat in the corner of the room like an old ghost—familiar, patient, waiting. It was the awareness that he'd wasted so much of his life fortifying himself behind sarcasm and cynicism, carving out a fortress no one could enter, only to realise, far too late, that someone had stood outside the whole time, knocking with gentle persistence. Someone who had been willing—not just to knock down the walls, but to pick through the rubble and wait for him to emerge. And he had made her wait. Had doubted her, pushed her, spurned every ounce of kindness with the flinch of a man convinced affection was just a prelude to cruelty. And now? Now he saw it for what it was. Not weakness. Not pity. But strength—the kind of strength he’d never known how to recognise, let alone deserve.

She returned the next day with sketches and notes. She had modified Grimmauld Place. Ripped out stair railings, expanded door frames, converted a sitting room into a laboratory with dual cauldrons and twin ingredient stores. She’d charmed the taps, enchanted the floors, adjusted everything so that he would not only survive there—but live.

"It’s ready," she had said simply. "It’s time to go home." And she had meant it—every word, without hesitation, as though the concept were effortless and familiar to her. Home. He turned the word over in his mind like a stone in his hand, worn and foreign, its weight unfamiliar and sharp. It had never belonged to him, not truly. Not in Spinner’s End, not in Hogwarts’s shadowed corridors, not in any borrowed space where he was little more than a ghost. But in her voice, that word shifted—became a promise, a place shaped not by bricks but by intent, by care, by the possibility that someone had built something with him in mind. It wasn’t the house she had transformed that unnerved him—it was the idea that she had done it without expecting anything in return. It was the realisation that, for the first time, someone had looked at the fractured pieces of him and built a place not to fix him, but to hold him as he was. And that possibility—warm, terrifying, and fragile—was almost too much to bear.

He wasn’t supposed to hope. Hope was dangerous. It came with expectations and heartbreak and all the things he’d long buried. But Hermione made it feel... survivable.

Perhaps, Severus thought, she didn’t see the monster that history had made him. Perhaps she saw a man. A broken one, yes. But one still capable of being repaired.

And for the first time in years, he wasn’t sure she was wrong. But that realisation sat heavy in his chest, sharp and unwelcome, like a seed of something tender planted in scorched earth. He didn’t know if anything could grow there—but if it could, if she truly believed there was something left of him worth tending to—then perhaps he owed it to her, and to himself, to try.

Grimmuald - 2000 - Hermione

The first few weeks of living with Severus were an adjustment neither of them could have fully prepared for. Hermione had done her best to arrange every detail of Grimmauld Place to accommodate his needs. Ramps had been charmed into place, furniture rearranged to make room for his chair, and a new bed installed on the ground floor near the sunlit conservatory so he wouldn’t feel entirely buried beneath the weight of the house’s past. She had even added shelves within reach, stocked with books he favoured and potions texts they both owned in duplicate. Every corridor had been widened slightly with careful charmwork. Thresholds were levelled, lighting softened. She modified the doors to open at a touch or a word, removing the physical burdens that would have only added to his quiet misery.

She wanted him to feel like it was his home, not simply a place she allowed him to stay. Part of it was guilt, an unspoken atonement for dragging him back into a world he hadn’t asked to rejoin. But it was also something quieter, deeper: a need for connection, for companionship that didn’t demand explanations. Making the house his as well as hers was the only way she knew how to say, "You’re not alone," without breaking herself open to say it out loud. And in turn, Severus did his best to be respectful, though it came haltingly, almost with suspicion, as if basic courtesy cost him something vital. His gratitude emerged reluctantly, tangled in sarcasm and dry observations, but it was there.

He spent most of his time in silence, either in his room or in the potions lab they now shared. Hermione had expected a colder presence, someone who would cast shadows in every corner and remind her that she had forced him to live. But instead, she discovered a man still wrapped in sharpness, but whose wit was far more alive than she'd expected. He could be funny—snarky, yes, but genuinely clever in a way that surprised her more than once. She found herself caught off guard by it, caught in quiet laughter in the kitchen over a comment he made about some pompous healer’s bedside manner or the absurd bureaucracy at St. Mungo’s. It made her remember he had always been intelligent, but now she saw a dry sort of charm beneath the bitterness, something carefully buried but not entirely lost. And somehow, that made it harder.

Still, those moments were rare. More often, Severus withdrew into the quiet solitude of his room or the potions lab, while Hermione buried herself in the comfort of routine and silence. They circled around one another, orbiting the same spaces but rarely colliding—two ghosts sharing the same haunted house. She declined his offer to brew her potions, reminding him—perhaps more defensively than necessary—that she held a Potions Mastery now. And she did. But she also knew he’d seen her tremor. That tremor, slight but persistent, had never truly gone away, a reminder of the cursed blade Bellatrix had carved into her arm. The wound had healed, but the damage to the nerves lingered. The scar itself was masked with glamour, but the pain was persistent, stubborn.

He never mentioned it. Never asked why she flinched when the pipes rattled or when an owl tapped the window unexpectedly. Never commented on how she tensed at sudden footsteps in the street. But he saw it. She was sure of that. Severus Snape saw everything. He saw the hollowness in her cheeks and the dark smudges beneath her eyes. He saw how the long sleeves she wore weren’t about modesty but hiding. How she never allowed herself to fully relax. How she often fell asleep in the library chair with her wand clenched in her hand, rigid even in sleep. But he said nothing. And Hermione was grateful. Because she didn’t want to talk about it. Not again. Not when talking had always made it worse.

She had tried that route, all the way in Australia. At first, there had been a small flicker of hope—that naming the thing might strip it of its power, that understanding would lessen the weight. But the words had only settled deeper into her chest, anchoring themselves to every breath. Instead of clarity, the diagnosis felt like a brand, confirming what she already feared: that she would never be the same, that she didn’t know how to be. A mind healer with kind eyes and a soft voice had diagnosed her gently, methodically, like a puzzle being reassembled by someone who had never seen the original picture. PTSD. Depression. Anxiety. Survivor’s Guilt. It was written neatly into a file and tucked away in a drawer somewhere, alongside hundreds of others from a war the world was trying desperately to forget.

But talking hadn’t helped. Talking had made the guilt heavier, not lighter. It exposed too much. It scraped the surface raw. Naming it hadn’t soothed anything—it had made the grief more articulate, more persistent. Naming it gave it shape, gave it voice, gave it presence. And that presence never truly left. It lingered in the back of her throat like a sour taste, always one breath away from rising again. It sat beside her when she brewed potions. It followed her into dreams and stood beside her bed when she woke with her hands clenched and her breathing ragged.

She hadn’t told anyone she was back in Britain. Not Harry. Not Ginny. Not George. It wasn’t that she didn’t love them—she did, fiercely—but the thought of them seeing what she had become two years on from the war was unbearable. How could she explain that the girl they remembered was long gone, replaced by someone who still woke up in a sweat, who flinched at her own shadow, who couldn’t look at a photo of the fallen without feeling like she should have been one of them? She couldn't bear their pity or their kindness, not when she hadn't earned it. So she had tucked herself into Grimmauld Place, the house that was once brimming with too many ghosts, and made it livable. Something survivable—for both of them, where no one expected her to smile or pretend. She couldn’t bear for anyone to see how broken she still was, not when the world seemed so eager to move on. She knew it wasn’t healthy. But it was manageable. And after everything, she had learned to settle for manageable. At least manageable didn’t collapse. At least manageable didn’t scream in the middle of the night.

Living with Severus came with both peace and peril. The peace was in the quiet—the comforting predictability of someone who understood the value of silence, who didn’t expect conversation when she had no words left to give. But the peril was more complicated. It was in the way his presence mirrored her own fractured calm, the way they both circled each other with ghosts on their shoulders. She never knew if a glance, a word, a gesture would crack open something neither of them was ready to face. Some days, it made her feel less alone. Other days, it made her feel raw, exposed—like walking through broken glass barefoot, pretending not to bleed. On the good days, he was almost kind, sharp-edged, but thoughtful in his own fashion. On the bad days, he was bitter and biting, his tongue a weapon drawn with little provocation.

And today was one of those days.

Hermione could feel it in the air before he even said a word, that simmering tension that followed him like a second skin. She moved about the room with quiet purpose, her brow knit with focus as she prepared another one of the potions meant to ease his nerve pain and stabilise his circulation. The familiar clinking of glass echoed in the quiet house, a symphony of habit and obligation. Grimmauld felt more like a sealed chamber than a sanctuary, the air thick with unspoken words and suppressed emotions that clung to the walls.

"You need to drink this," Hermione said, holding the potion toward him with steady hands. Her voice was soft, firm, as unyielding as the woman who had once defied the Ministry and walked into war.

Severus’s gaze was ice and steel, fixed on her with thinly veiled contempt. "And if I refuse?" he asked, his tone dry and brittle, his voice rough from sleep and silence, as though defiance were his last remaining weapon.

Hermione didn’t flinch. She met his stare evenly. "Then you’ll continue to suffer. I know it’s unpleasant, but it will help."

With a theatrical huff, he reached for the vial, his fingers brushing against hers. It was nothing, just a touch. And yet, something passed between them in that brief contact—something that hummed quietly beneath the layers of mistrust and exhaustion. It felt like static, like something neither of them had words for yet.

He drank it in one go, grimacing at the taste. "Happy now?" he sneered, though the edge was dulled, the old venom diluted by the exhaustion that never quite left his eyes.

Hermione sat across from him, folding her legs beneath her. "I’m not doing this to make you miserable," she said, voice level. "I’m doing this because I won’t let you suffer."

Severus tilted his head slightly. There was a pause—long enough to feel like it might shatter the room’s brittle tension.

"Why?" he asked finally. His eyes, sharp as ever, stayed locked on her face. "Why go to such lengths—for me?"

Hermione looked away, her gaze drifting toward the fireplace. The flames were low, casting flickering shadows on the walls, their light dancing across her features. She looked tired, not in the way sleep could fix, but worn from the inside out. "Because," she began slowly, "you’re all I have. And everyone deserves a chance at something better. Even you, Severus. Especially you. Even you deserve kindness."

He didn’t answer. Not aloud. He simply wheeled away, back into the hallway that led to his room, disappearing into the quiet like a shadow retreating from dawn.

Hermione remained where she was, the empty vial still on the table, cooling fast. She had said too much. She always did.

But it had been true. Every word of it. And maybe, just maybe, he'd heard her anyway. She remained seated long after the sound of his wheels faded into the hush of the house, staring into the fire as if it could offer her an answer. The flickering light reflected off the empty vial, casting shadows across the table and her hands, which trembled slightly despite the warmth. Her chest ached—not from fear or regret, but from the fragile thread of hope she hadn’t meant to admit aloud. If he had truly heard her—if he carried even a shard of what she’d said into that darkened room of his—then perhaps something had shifted. Perhaps something could begin.

Grimmuald - 2000 - Severus

Living with Hermione was equal parts good and equal parts hell. Not hell in the biblical, fire-and-brimstone sense, but something subtler, quieter. A gnawing discomfort, like a splinter beneath the skin—too small to be dangerous but too persistent to ignore. Something that crept in around the edges and made his chest ache without warning. It came in waves: in the soft click of her teacup being set down across the room, in the rustle of her pages turning too quickly, in the muffled weeping behind her door at midnight. Severus had never imagined he would live with anyone again, let alone someone like Hermione Granger. She was structured, methodical, compassionate to a fault. All the things that had once driven him to distraction at Hogwarts were now shaping the very rhythm of his life.

He hadn’t expected her to change, not really. But the girl she had been—bright, loud, insistent—was now cloaked in stillness, gentleness, and a sort of weariness that unsettled him far more than he could admit. It wasn’t silence born from serenity. It was the quiet of someone learning to survive around the shrapnel still embedded in their soul. He recognised that quiet. He had worn it himself. She moved like someone learning the house by feel rather than memory, carefully, cautiously, as if each footstep might crack open something buried beneath the floorboards.

It wasn’t hell, exactly. It was the realisation that he was beginning to notice her. Not in the way people usually meant when they said they noticed someone. It wasn’t attraction—not physical, not romantic. It wasn’t even pity. It was subtler than that. It was awareness. The kind that made him pay attention to the way her shoulders curled inward when she thought she was alone, the way her fingers tapped rhythms on the side of her teacup as though warding off some unseen pressure. He found himself cataloguing her silences, the length of her breaths, the shape of her solitude. Every twitch of her jaw, every flick of her gaze away from his. It was observation, yes—but it had long stopped being academic. It had become personal.

It was in the smallest of things—like the way she played with her food more often than she ate it. One of her insufferable rules was that they had to eat meals together, and while he hadn’t initially cared, he had come to appreciate the ritual. Silence over breakfast or dinner was no longer suffocating; it was… grounding. A tether in a world that often felt unreal, even now, years after the war. And because of that, he had also started to watch. She never finished a meal. Most days, she pushed her food around her plate, taking one or two small bites before setting down her fork. Unless it was toast.

Four quarters, each one covered in something different: marmalade, jam, butter, and lemon curd. Two cups of strong black coffee. Every single morning, without fail. He’d made the mistake once of asking her why she ruined perfectly good toast—toast he, mind you, had taken the time to crisp exactly the way she liked—with such chaos. She had smiled at him—watery, thin-lipped, fragile. “Harry, Remus, Sirius and I used to eat breakfast together here. Summer between fourth and fifth year. This is how Remus used to eat his, and we all just… adopted it.”

She had said it so softly, it was almost a whisper, as if the memory was both too precious and too painful to speak aloud. Then she had stood, abruptly, tears falling freely down her cheeks, and excused herself to her room. He hadn’t brought it up again. And he never would. That had been his first lesson in understanding that some ghosts never really leave. They simply learn to live inside of us, pressed into the curve of our ribs and the backs of our minds.

That same day, he'd realised she’d taken over Black’s old bedroom. It had been redecorated, naturally—the furniture no longer screamed aristocratic decay, the colour palette now muted and soft instead of the cold opulence it once bore. But Sirius’s things were still there. A collection of vintage Muggle records lined the shelves, their covers worn with time. Old t-shirts, too—mostly faded band names and tour logos, folded in neat piles or slung carelessly over the back of the chair. They weren’t Hermione’s, but she wore them all the same. Oversized on her smaller frame, they clung to her collarbones and slipped from her shoulders like they were draped over memory rather than flesh.

She didn’t wear them for attention. Merlin, no. She wore them like armour. Like comfort. Like grief. She moved through the house with her grief tucked into every inch of her, stitched into her sleeves, poured into the way she kept the fireplace lit even when it wasn’t cold. She folded Sirius’s shirts like sacred objects, smoothing the worn fabric between her fingers with a reverence that suggested she still expected to see him walk through the door one day, laughing like he used to. And there were tattoos, too. He had caught sight of them only a few times when the fabric slid down her back or when she stretched her arms above her head. Dog paw prints. Two wolves with a small blue cub. A stag, an otter and two magpies like patronuses moved around the dog prints and wolves with a cub. Symbols inked into her skin in fine black lines, etched like the pages of a story she no longer wanted to tell aloud.

He had never asked about them, but they haunted him more than he liked to admit. It wasn’t the imagery that unnerved him—it was what they meant. That she had chosen to remember, permanently. That she had chosen to carry them all with her, even now. That she had carved their memory into her flesh as if to say, I will not let you vanish. That she bore the weight of their lives like scripture, inked not in blood but in love and loss. Some days, the sight of those tattoos made something twist painfully in his chest, something he dared not name.

But what unsettled him more than her tattoos, more than the strange rituals with food or the layers of grief stitched into her clothing, was the silence of the house beyond them. The absence of other voices. He hadn’t heard or seen a single visitor in months. No owls bearing friendly letters. No laughter echoing through the halls. Surely she had told her precious friends she was back. Surely someone—Potter, Weasley, the redhead—would have come to check on her. But they didn’t. Not once. It was as if the rest of the world had forgotten she existed—or worse, chosen to forget.

She mentioned once, in passing, that crowds made her panic. That ever since the war, she couldn’t bear to be surrounded. Too much noise. Too much movement. Too many ghosts in the faces of the living. He had nodded, understanding too well the claustrophobic weight of that kind of fear. But this isolation was more than avoidance. It was deliberate. Protective. A defence mechanism sharpened into routine. She had locked herself inside Grimmauld Place like a queen in a tower with no desire for rescue. Her life was built on routines that shielded her from the edges of grief—structured days, timed potions, regulated meals—and he watched with a quiet, reluctant awe as she managed to hold herself together one breath at a time.

Everything she needed arrived by owl. Her correspondences were all by enchanted parchment. She had charmed the wards so thoroughly that not even curious neighbours could accidentally stumble into her world. And yet, for all the ways she controlled her environment, she couldn’t mask the exhaustion in her eyes. The way she curled inward when the silence stretched too long. The brittle smile she wore when she said she was fine. The way she lingered in the doorway before entering a room, as if measuring whether the silence inside was heavier than the one outside. He’d seen that hesitation before—on battlefield edges, in hospital corridors, on his own face in the mirror. It was the pause before collapse.

Because in her silence, Severus saw his own reflection. Not the proud, bitter professor of old, but the broken man who had survived when he shouldn't have. When he hadn't wanted to. A man who had stared into the eyes of death and found no peace, only more waiting, more suffering. And she—Hermione bloody Granger—was living proof that the war had not spared the innocent, nor the brave. He remembered her as a girl with fire in her voice, who argued with professors and defended house-elves with righteous fury. Now, she moved through the house like a shadow.

He remembered overhearing her laugh once in the library, just before the final battle. A real laugh, bright and high and infuriating. He remembered thinking then that the world was a place too cruel to let someone like her exist untouched. And he had been right. But he hadn’t known it would gut him to see her like this—wearing other people's shirts, brewing potions by candlelight, surviving on bitter coffee and aching memory. He had expected her to be fine. Brilliant, brilliant Granger. She had always been too clever for her own good, always ten steps ahead. But this version of her—this quiet, fraying edge of a woman—was harder to look at than any battlefield corpse.

He remembered finding a book tucked under one of the sofa cushions the week before. It had her writing in the margins, her neat scrawl slowly disintegrating into scribbled ramblings about rituals, bloodlines, theoretical resurrection. He’d snapped it closed, not out of anger, but panic. Not because he feared her delving into things best left untouched, but because he knew why. Because he too had studied dark arts not for power, but for possibility. For reversal. For mercy. He wondered how many nights she had cried over that book, wondering if she could change the laws of magic, just once, to bring one of them back.

He didn't ask. He couldn't. Because she wasn’t fine. And he was too much of a coward to ask. Because if he asked, she might say it out loud. Because if she answered honestly—if she let him see the full depth of what still haunted her—he didn’t know what the hell he’d do about it. And then he wouldn’t be able to pretend that he hadn’t felt the same—that he didn’t lie awake some nights thinking of what he would trade to hear Lily laugh again. 

He hated that he noticed. Hated that he had learned the difference between her real laugh and the hollow one she offered when she thought it was expected. Hated that her absence lingered even when she sat beside him. Hated that he had started to care.

No. Not care. He didn’t care. He respected her. That was all. He respected her tenacity. Her resolve. Her relentless, exhausting compassion. Even when it wasn’t deserved. Even when he offered her nothing but sarcasm and sharp words in return. Even when he resented the part of himself that kept listening for her footsteps in the hallway after she had gone to bed. He didn’t want to need her to keep existing the way she did—quiet and hollow but still fighting, still showing up. But he did.

But the truth was, the more he watched her, the more he feared what would happen if she stopped showing up. If she stopped pushing through the silence. If one morning, the toast remained uneaten. If the records in her room stopped spinning. If the letters from Australia stopped being answered. If the fireplace went cold. If she no longer lingered in doorways but shut them all instead. If her light, as dim and quiet as it had become, flickered out entirely.

He pressed his fingertips to his temple, the familiar ache blooming behind his eyes. The war had taken so much from them all, and yet the world seemed to think survival was reward enough. That waking up every morning with the weight of the dead pressing down on your chest was something to be celebrated.

He had not wanted to live. She had made him. She had pulled him back from the edge and now here they both were, two remnants of something that had already collapsed. A pair of quiet ghosts occupying a house too full of memory. And yet, each day she brought him tea. She reminded him of potions. She fixed the creak in his bedroom door. She gave him space and silence and the impossible gift of patience. And each day, he stayed. Not because he was recovering, but because in her fractured presence, he saw the only thing that resembled honesty he had left in this world.

And if he ever lost that—if she ever disappeared into the dark she fought against so stubbornly—he did not know if he would survive a second resurrection.

And that, above all else, was what terrified him most of all.

Grimmuald - December 31st 2000 - Hermione

Letting Severus live in Grimmauld Place on his own terms had never been up for debate. Hermione hadn’t brought him back from the edge of death to trap him in expectation. Whatever remained of the life he had been forced back into belonged to him, not to her. And so, she gave him space—the kind of space she herself craved from the moment she stepped back into Britain under a cloud of anonymity. The only request she’d made was that they share meals. Not out of politeness or some attempt at bonding, but because meals anchored time. They gave shape to otherwise formless days and reminded them, perhaps both of them, that they were still human. Severus had agreed without protest, and for that she was quietly grateful.

In truth, the arrangement was more ritual than relationship. Most days passed in near silence, punctuated only by the clatter of cutlery and the occasional muttered comment about potion ingredients or owl deliveries. They did not press into each other’s solitude. They did not ask or explain. It was a fragile equilibrium: two broken people tiptoeing through the shattered glass of their own pasts, each too wary to touch the other’s wounds. She had told him, early on, that he was free to invite whomever he wished into the house. That he could go wherever he pleased—she would vanish without question. He never had. Just as she had never once left the confines of the house, nor sent word to anyone that she had returned.

It wasn’t healthy. Of course it wasn’t. But Hermione had long stopped measuring her life in healthy or unhealthy the day she stood alone in a sunlit graveyard in Melbourne, staring at the neat headstones that read Wendell and Monica Wilkins, not Granger. She had stood frozen in the still air, the scent of eucalyptus sharp in her nose, as if the world dared her to scream. But she hadn’t. She’d just stared. That was the moment something inside her had quietly collapsed, and since then, she had existed in degrees of tolerable. Not peace. Not recovery. Just tolerable. She no longer measured days in progress, only in endurance. And it would have been laughable—if it weren’t so quietly tragic—to call Severus’s silence unhealthy when she herself had spent five months in hiding. Not from danger, but from the past. From her friends. From the version of herself she had once been.

They were masterful at survival, she and Severus—brave in war, but strangely inept when it came to the fragile business of healing. Perhaps cowardice was too simple a word for it. Avoidance, she mused, might be closer. Or a mutual reluctance to risk the vulnerability that came with confronting pain aloud. They circled their own wounds with the reverence of seasoned mourners, never daring to probe too deeply, lest they bleed again. What mattered was that neither asked the other to do anything more than endure—and in a world that celebrated victory, their quiet evasion of grief looked, to outsiders, like failure. But it was all they had. It was enough.

So she buried herself in her work—complex correspondence with the Australian Department of Mysteries, who, like the British, had their own Veil. That shadowy, half-breathing arch that whispered like a heartbeat in the silence. It had haunted her since the day Sirius fell through it. Fell—not died. Fell. Because Harry’s voice still rang in her ears all these years later, describing the moment again and again, not in anger, but in disbelief. Bellatrix had used a red spell. A Stunning Spell. Not a Killing Curse. And Sirius had stumbled—not screamed—through the curtain and vanished. No body. No light. Just absence. It hadn’t looked like death. It had looked like being taken.

That doubt had gnawed at her like a parasite, growing sharper each time she tried to forget it. So she had chased it—across oceans, into dusty archives and forbidden texts. And when she returned, her grief in hand like a talisman, she had quietly taken up residence in the only room in Grimmauld that felt like it belonged to someone else entirely.

Sirius’s bedroom still held pieces of him. The house-elves had packed away his things after his death, but someone—perhaps Kreacher in a final act of loyalty—had left them in his room. Records. Muggle band T-shirts. Cigarette butts and whisky bottle caps in a chipped bowl. His scent lingered still in the old leather jacket she found hanging in the wardrobe: sandalwood, tobacco, coffee, and something sharp and clean that was just Sirius. She shrank it to her size without hesitation. It became armour. She wrapped herself in it on days when her skin didn’t feel like her own—when it felt too tight, like clothing two sizes too small, or too thin, as if the world might seep straight through her pores. On those days, she couldn’t always tell where she ended and the ghosts began. The jacket helped anchor her, a borrowed weight that reminded her of someone who once made space in the world by simply refusing to disappear quietly.

She had replaced the ghastly green carpet with a fluffy orange one she ordered from a Muggle catalogue and, on some evenings, when the weight in her chest became unbearable, she played his records and spun herself in dizzy circles until her thoughts blurred. It reminded her of her father, who used to dance with her in the living room when she was a little girl. A lifetime ago.

She always remembered to cast the silencing charm. Except once.

That one time, when she’d forgotten, she’d rushed from her room, mortified, to apologise—only to stop cold. Severus sat where Walburga’s portrait had once cursed and screamed, in his wheelchair, head tilted back, eyes closed, gently tapping his fingers in rhythm to the pulse of Led Zeppelin pouring from her record player. He hadn’t seen her. Or if he had, he didn’t let on. She turned around quietly and went back to her room, heart strangely full. She never silenced the music again.

Which brought her to tonight.

The kitchen was warm, the fire crackling low in the hearth, and her hands trembled around the parchment clutched between them. The owl had come just before dusk—her partner in the Australian Department had found it. A spell. A ritual. Not theory, but practice. Ancient, intricate magic. A method, under very precise conditions, to summon someone who had crossed the Veil, if they had not been killed by curse or spell before entering. Hermione’s pulse had leapt into her throat as she read it over and over again, barely able to breathe.

Now, she paced, parchment trembling in her hand as she explained it all to Severus in a breathless rush. Words poured out of her before she could stop them. Hope poured out of her before she could rein it back in.

He was holding a mug. Then he wasn’t. It slipped from his hand and shattered on the stone floor, the sharp crack ricocheting through the kitchen like a gunshot. Hermione jumped, her breath catching painfully in her chest. For a split second, everything stilled—the parchment clenched tighter in her hand, the thrum of hope in her veins faltering. Her heart pounded against her ribs like it wanted out. The sound, so sudden and violent, had clawed at something primal inside her, something buried just beneath the surface of her carefully maintained calm.

“You are bloody joking?!” he barked, the words sharp-edged as glass, his eyes narrowing like she’d just grown horns.

Hermione flinched, her wand twitching instinctively as she vanished the broken shards from the floor with a quiet flick. But, beneath the jolt of nerves, there was something almost giddy, electric—like standing on the precipice of something impossible. She gripped the parchment tighter, forcing a breath through her lips. “Nope,” she said, and popped the ‘p’ with exaggerated brightness, a shaky grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. Half disbelief, half defiance. She lifted the parchment between them like a flag of rebellion.

He didn’t reach for it. He snatched it, as if afraid she’d change her mind. His fingers brushed hers—brief, incidental, but enough to make her skin tingle. He bent his head and began scanning the script with the kind of ruthless precision he’d once reserved for NEWT essays and flawed potion formulas. Her stomach twisted. She watched the flicker of concentration on his face, saw the slow dilation of his pupils as he moved through the lines, faster now, absorbing, calculating.

When he reached the bottom, he paused. Something imperceptible shifted. Not his posture, not his expression—those remained maddeningly still—but the weight of the room changed, as if it had inhaled and held its breath.

“Well, Miss Granger,” he said at last, voice quieter now, edged with a reluctant sort of awe, “this is… quite brilliant.”

Hermione blinked. Of all the possible reactions she’d conjured in her mind—disbelief, derision, fury—that was the one she hadn’t prepared for. She felt herself flush, the heat rising from her chest to her cheeks. “Do you… do you think it could work?” she asked, her voice softer, threading hope and fear in equal measure.

He nodded once, the motion slow and deliberate, as though each word he was about to speak came at great cost. “If the preparation is precise… yes. I believe it could.” His voice, though calm, carried a strange weight—measured, controlled, yet threaded with something Hermione couldn’t quite name. Respect, perhaps. Or wary hope.

The quiet stretched between them, not uncomfortable but heavy, filled with the sound of fire crackling and the distant creak of Grimmauld’s old bones. Then, finally, he spoke again—his tone lower, less guarded. “If you truly intend to pursue this, I would like to help you.”

Hermione stared at him. For a moment, she wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. “You’d like to help me, Sir?” she echoed, her voice tinged with disbelief, a half-scoff born more from surprise than doubt.

He didn’t even flinch. Instead, he turned his gaze back to the parchment and traced one of the ritual’s sigils with his index finger. “If you’re set on bringing the mutt back, little witch,” he said, “then I’d much prefer you do it properly. With backup. With care. Without killing yourself in the process.” The words weren’t gentle, but they weren’t cold either. They carried the sort of gruff, understated concern that Severus Snape dealt in when the sentiment was real and therefore terrifying. It wasn’t softness. It was something better—truth wrapped in barbed wire.

But her eyes went wide at the nickname— little witch —the unexpected intimacy of it blooming low in her chest like a burst of warmth she hadn’t prepared for. It lingered, curling beneath her ribs, unsettling in its gentleness because it was so unlike the man she had known for years, so unlike the acerbic professor who once spat barbed truths and disdain in equal measure. But now, that same man sat there, still and composed, utterly unaware that he'd just undone her with two words. He was too focused, too Severus—anchored in the ritual, his dark eyes scanning runes, his fingers tracing logic instead of emotion.

She watched him, silent, unblinking, her breath caught somewhere between her lungs and her throat. There was no second head, no great transformation—but something fundamental had shifted. Not in his posture, not in the air between them, but in her. When , she wondered with a strange, fluttering ache, had he grown a heart? And worse— how had she missed it happening right in front of her? It felt as if she’d been reading the wrong pages of a book all this time, and now, suddenly, the meaning changed. The man before her was still Severus Snape—but there was something else beneath the edges now. Something gentler. Something that terrified her in its quiet sincerity.

She cleared her throat, the sound too loud in the hushed stillness between them. Her fingers curled slightly against the edge of the table, grounding herself. “Okay,” she said, the word coming out quieter than she intended, but no less firm. It tasted like resolve and something more fragile beneath it—something she didn't dare name.

Severus inclined his head once, then carefully folded the parchment with slow, precise movements. He placed it on the table beside him like something sacred. “Good,” he said. “But before we start anything, I need one thing from you.” His voice didn’t carry the usual drawl of challenge—it was quieter, more anchored, as if he were offering her something instead of demanding it.

Hermione tilted her head, wariness slipping across her features as she studied him. “Name your price,” she said, her voice steady but threaded with caution.

The faintest trace of a smirk tugged at his mouth, not cruel, but almost playful—an echo of the man he might have been if life had carved a gentler path. There was fatigue in his eyes, yes, but something else had taken root behind it. “You need to let Potter know you’re back,” he said, tone still mild. “And that you’ve taken it upon yourself to house and nurse me like some stubborn guardian angel.”

Hermione stiffened. The breath caught in her throat, her spine going rigid. Her immediate instinct was to deflect, to argue—but Severus lifted a hand, a quiet gesture of pre-emptive stillness, and she stopped.

A beat passed. Her lungs strained. Then she exhaled. “Alright,” she said, the word rough-edged now, dragged from somewhere deeper. “But only if you tell Minerva you’re awake. She deserves to know.”

This time, it was his turn to hesitate. A flicker passed through his expression—recognition, maybe even something close to guilt—but then he nodded once, solemn and slow. “Deal, little witch.” His voice was softer now, touched with something almost reverent.

And Hermione, heart thudding wildly against her ribs, could only stare. In that moment, she understood with painful clarity that Severus Snape wasn’t trying to kill her with bitterness or silence or guarded words. He was trying to kill her with kindness—quiet, tentative, almost imperceptible acts of it.

And Merlin help her, she wasn’t sure she minded one bit.

Chapter Text

Ministry of Magic 2001 - Hermione

It took Hermione an entire week to mentally prepare herself for a trip to see Harry. A full seven days spent wrestling with her own fears, staring anxiously at the Floo in Grimmauld’s drawing room, the emerald flames quietly mocking her inability to step forward. Each morning she dressed carefully, intending to leave, and each evening she retreated in defeat, back to her room where mirrors reflected a woman she hardly recognised.

Her therapist in Australia had armed her with words—empty phrases intended to bolster confidence, hollow affirmations that she whispered to herself in a voice that sounded weak and foreign: "I am strong," "I can do this," "I am stronger than my fears." Hermione despised them. They felt meaningless, fragile as glass, breaking apart beneath the weight of her memories. By the third day, her patience fractured completely. The mirror in her bedroom shattered beneath the force of her scream, her reflection splintering into jagged pieces on the floor. It felt fitting, somehow. Poetic, even, that she could only destroy herself further in the quest for strength.

Severus found her shortly after, curled tightly on the floor amid the glittering shards, body wracked with sobs that she could no longer contain. He moved silently into the room, saying nothing as he vanished the broken glass with a flick of his wand. Without a word, he reached down, lifting her effortlessly into his lap. She had half-expected him to leave her there, alone with her chaos, but instead, he wheeled them both into the kitchen, set her gently in a chair, and methodically brewed tea.

When he finally placed the steaming mug in front of her, it landed with a soft clink on the scarred wooden table—an unspoken offering, neither forceful nor passive, but something in between. Severus did not sit, not yet. Instead, he remained still in his chair, watching her with the intensity of someone not accustomed to offering comfort but doing so now because he could no longer bear to remain silent. His voice, when it came, was low and steady, a command clothed in concern. "Talk to me, Hermione."

Her fingers curled around the mug, seeking warmth more than comfort, but her gaze slid away from his. Shame coiled tight in her chest like a serpent, hissing cruel truths she no longer had the strength to refute. "It’s nothing," she murmured, and even to her own ears, the words sounded brittle, as if they might shatter under the weight of scrutiny. Her voice caught on the edge of the lie, rough and trembling.

"It is not nothing," Severus said, the sharpness in his tone cutting clean through her defence. His eyes were dark, but not cold—piercing, yes, but laced with something more than mere judgement. There was something buried in his gaze, something that passed through those dark eyes like a flicker of lightning behind storm clouds—perhaps it was concern, subtle and stiff in its presentation, the way only someone who had forgotten how to offer comfort could manage. Or maybe it was recognition, the weary echo of seeing his own grief mirrored in hers, an understanding carved from shared scars and sleepless nights. Whatever it was, it hovered between them, silent and undeniable, not quite pity but something adjacent—sharper, deeper, harder to name. "It is not healthy, little witch."

Hermione’s mouth twisted in a bitter smirk, and she let out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. "Look who’s talking about healthy," she said, sarcasm blunted by exhaustion. Her tone lacked venom. It was a fragile attempt to deflect, to claw back a shred of control.

He scoffed in return, his lips tightening into a line of exasperation, but not retreat. "Just bloody talk," he said, not with anger, but insistence—the kind that didn’t demand submission, but offered space. The kind that said: I’m still here. Even if you fall apart.

And she did. Perhaps it was the exhaustion, perhaps the rare tenderness she glimpsed beneath his harsh exterior, but she found herself speaking words she had never voiced aloud, her secrets spilling freely. She recounted how she had obliviated her parents, intending to protect them from harm, only to discover, after months of searching, that they'd been killed anyway—a senseless accident, a drunk driver robbing her of any chance at reconciliation. Her voice broke as she confessed that her nightmares had worsened since returning to Britain, the image of Bellatrix Lestrange's cruel laughter permanently etched into the deepest recesses of her mind.

"I know logically that she's dead," Hermione said bitterly, tears streaming silently down her face, "but it's as if my body won't believe it. My heart won't let go."

Severus listened without interrupting, his face unreadable, as she admitted to her panic attacks in crowded places, how even the thought of being among people caused her heart to race and her throat to close. "That's why everything is done via owl," she admitted shamefully. "I haven't set foot in Diagon Alley since returning. The thought terrifies me."

She drew in a long, uneven breath, hesitating at the edge of exposure. Her hand trembled slightly as she pulled back the sleeve of her jumper, the movement deliberate and quiet, like a confession. With the faintest flick of her fingers, she ended the Glamour charm that she had kept in place for months, perhaps longer. The scar emerged slowly beneath the soft light of the kitchen, grotesquely stark against her pale skin. The word—MUDBLOOD—remained etched there in harsh, raised lines, the letters still angry, livid, raw with a hate that lingered even after the war had ended. It was not just a scar; it was a sentence, a condemnation left to fester on her body, a cruel memory carved by Bellatrix’s maniacal hand.

Severus didn’t flinch. He didn’t speak. He simply stared, the silence thickening around them like fog rolling in off the sea. His expression gave nothing away at first, but Hermione could feel the weight of his gaze pressing down on her. The air between them pulsed with something heavy and unspoken, and still he didn’t look away. She shifted under the scrutiny, her throat tightening, shame and vulnerability prickling along her spine. Her fingers twitched with the instinct to cover herself again, to hide the brand that marked her as something lesser in the eyes of a world she had fought to protect. The scar had always felt like a failure. A reminder that she had not been strong enough, fast enough, magical enough to stop it.

And then his eyes lifted to meet hers, and the silence changed. There was no disgust there. No shock. Only a slow-burning sorrow, muted and old, like the pain of a man who had seen too many scars to count. In the deep black of his gaze, she saw pity—clear and sharp and immediate—and it pierced her like a blade. Not because it was unkind, but because it came from him, from Severus Snape, a man who had spent so long despising what she represented. She had not prepared herself for his empathy, and it undid her.

She looked away quickly, the sting of humiliation rising in her throat. Pity was the last thing she needed. Especially his. Especially now. She re-covered the scar with clumsy haste, dragging the sleeve back over her arm as if she could bury it all again. The kitchen was too quiet. His silence was too full. Her shame too loud.

After that day, Hermione made a quiet vow to avoid him. She stopped lingering in the hallway. She retreated before meals and left quickly after. Conversations became sparse again, eyes averted, steps soft, presence almost ghost-like. Meals were taken in silence, their fragile camaraderie reduced to brittle nods and fork scrapes. The house returned to the kind of stillness that didn’t comfort—it stifled. But the retreat felt safer than exposing herself again. Vulnerability had its price, and Hermione was already in debt.

Which was why, when Hermione finally found herself standing nervously in front of the receptionist at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, her hair straightened and dyed a brilliant red, her eyes transformed from warm brown to icy blue, her skin several shades lighter, she felt like an imposter, an interloper trespassing upon a life that no longer belonged to her.

The elderly witch behind the desk hardly glanced up from her meticulously painted nails. "Name and purpose, dear," she said in a bored tone.

"Hermione Jean Granger, here to see Auror Harry James Potter," Hermione managed in a single breath, her heart thundering beneath her ribs.

Without a glance, the receptionist held out a hand. "Your wand, dear."

Reluctantly, Hermione relinquished her wand. The elderly witch cast a routine identity verification spell, which shimmered briefly before confirming Hermione’s identity. "You can collect your wand when you leave. Auror Potter's office is the second door on the left," she said, still not bothering to look up.

"Thank you," Hermione murmured, her voice barely audible as she moved past, nerves thrumming painfully beneath her skin.

Before reaching Harry's office, she slipped into the loo, taking a moment to steady herself. With a whispered incantation, she stripped away her Glamour charms. Watching her familiar reflection re-emerge in the mirror—wild curls, familiar brown eyes, and skin returned to its natural tone—felt oddly comforting. She drew a deep, trembling breath, attempting to gather the frayed threads of her courage once more.

When she finally stepped out into the corridor again, she paused for a long, heavy moment before Harry's door. The brass handle felt cool and reassuringly solid beneath her fingertips. She knocked lightly, pulse quickening at the sound of Harry’s familiar voice calling from within: "Come in."

She pushed the door open, stepping into a space that immediately felt both alien and achingly familiar. Harry sat behind a desk piled high with parchments, his hair as unruly as ever, glasses sliding down his nose as he worked intently. When he glanced up, his green eyes widened in shock, recognition, and then concern as he took in her appearance.

“Hermione?” Harry’s voice broke softly into the quiet, rough with disbelief, like he wasn’t entirely sure she was real.

“Hello, Harry,” she answered with a fragile calm, a tremulous smile forming across her lips and vanishing just as quickly, as if afraid to linger.

In an instant, he rose to his feet, moving around the desk without hesitation. She didn’t even see the motion, only felt it—his arms wrapping around her in a tight, familiar embrace. Her body went rigid, instincts screaming, breath caught tight in her chest. The tension held for one aching heartbeat, and then another, before something deep inside her began to soften. Her arms came up, slowly, carefully, wrapping around him with hesitant warmth. She let herself sink into the feeling—his scent, his warmth, the steady thrum of a heartbeat she once knew like her own. The sting of tears pricked behind her eyes, sharp and sudden, but she held them back with the kind of practiced restraint that came from too many years spent grieving in silence.

When he finally pulled away, his hands lingered on her arms, anchoring her to the moment as he stared at her with eyes wide and wounded. “When did you come back?” he asked, the question barely above a whisper, as if speaking it aloud might make the truth harder to bear.

Hermione swallowed hard, eyes flickering away before she returned his gaze. “About five months ago,” she murmured, each word wrapped in guilt. “I’ve been at Grimmauld. Hiding. Mostly trying to make sense of anything.”

His expression didn’t warm the way she had hoped. Instead, something dimmed in his eyes. His shoulders sagged, as though the breath he had been holding released only disappointment. The silence that followed between them was thick, oppressive, bristling with old wounds and quiet betrayals. He didn’t speak immediately, but she saw the question forming in his clenched jaw, in the way his hand dropped from her shoulder as though the connection had burned him.

“Five months?” he repeated, the words stiff with disbelief. “You’ve been home for five bloody months, and I thought you were still in Australia?”

She nodded slowly, shame creeping into her posture as she folded her arms across her chest. Her gaze dropped to the worn carpet, eyes tracing the frayed edges and the small curl of thread near her foot. “I didn’t want anyone to see me like this. I didn’t want anyone to see how broken I still am.”

Harry remained motionless, his frame tense and unmoving as if rooted by the sheer weight of emotion he carried. His face had set into something unreadable, a rigid mask pulled tight over the chaos brewing just beneath the surface. It was all there, plain as day to her—the grief etched into the fine lines around his eyes, the betrayal wound tight in the set of his jaw, the deep confusion flickering just behind his glasses like a candle guttering against the wind. None of it was spoken aloud, but it didn’t need to be. She felt it, raw and heavy, the way one might feel a thunderstorm gathering on the horizon.

His silence was not empty; it pulsed, vibrant with unspoken pain, the kind that coils deep in the ribs and never really fades. It pressed down on her chest, thick and suffocating, and she had to fight not to shrink beneath it. He didn’t say her name again, didn’t reach out a hand, didn’t wrap her in forgiveness. There were no reassurances, no soft words, no promises that it was okay.

And she didn’t ask for any. She stood still and carried the weight of it with quiet acceptance, because perhaps—just perhaps—she believed she deserved to feel it. Perhaps she believed that five months of silence, of hiding, of letting her friends believe she was a world away while they grieved and moved forward without her, earned her the ache that now bloomed in her chest.

Maybe she didn’t deserve absolution. Not in that moment, not with the weight of her absence still hanging in the air between them like smoke that refused to clear. Not while guilt still clawed its way up her throat, sharp and persistent, and the ache of old friendship stood quietly wounded before her. Forgiveness would come, she hoped, in time—but for now, all she could do was stand there and own the space her silence had carved between them.

A heavy silence settled between them, thick with years of unsaid words and unshared grief. Finally, Hermione spoke again, her voice steadier, brimming with cautious determination. “But there’s something important, Harry. Something you need to know.”

Harry straightened, alertness sharpening his gaze. “Go on.”

She held his gaze, refusing to look away, even though her heartbeat thundered in her ears and her palms had gone clammy with nerves. Every muscle in her body was drawn taut, like a bowstring, as she reached slowly into her bag and withdrew the aged parchment, the edges slightly curled and ink faded in places from the many times she had traced the runes and read the instructions over in the quiet solitude of her room. Her fingers trembled as she handed it to Harry, her voice low, yet steady with purpose. “It’s about Sirius,” she said, each word deliberately measured, heavy with the weight of all it implied.

Harry took the parchment without a word, his brow furrowed as his eyes scanned the text. Hermione studied his face as he read, watching the flickers of confusion dissolve into widening astonishment. His reaction might have seemed comical to someone who didn’t know him—those rapid double takes, his eyebrows shooting up so fast they nearly disappeared into his fringe—but to Hermione, it was a confirmation of something much deeper. Harry had always been quick. People underestimated him, mistook his modesty and impulsiveness for simplicity, but she knew better. He was perceptive, far more than most gave him credit for, and she had trusted that he would understand not just what the ritual was, but what it meant. What she was trying to do. What she was trying to give back.

Shock rippled across his features, his mouth parting slightly as his fingers tightened on the parchment. Then, just as quickly, hope flashed in his eyes—sharp, bright, and so raw it made her chest ache. He looked up at her, his expression caught somewhere between wonder and disbelief. “Bloody fuckering fuck, Mi,” he muttered, his voice breaking with emotion before a sharp, bitter laugh escaped him, as though his body didn’t quite know what to do with the surge of feeling. “This is…” He trailed off, shaking his head in awe before finally finding the question that mattered most. “You think this might actually work?” 

Hermione’s lips curved into the faintest suggestion of a smile, not one of amusement, but of quiet melancholy, tinged with a cautious flicker of hope. The expression didn’t quite reach her eyes, and yet there was something in the way she held herself—just a touch more upright, a little less weighted—that suggested this moment mattered. “Well,” she murmured, voice soft but sure, “with the wizard who’s helping me, it just might.”

The parchment still clutched in his hand, Harry slowly lowered himself onto the edge of his desk, his movements uncharacteristically slow and deliberate, as though some part of him was still trying to catch up with what he’d just read. He exhaled deeply, a quiet rush of breath that carried the tension of disbelief, of emotion barely held in check. His brow furrowed, gaze searching hers with a new intensity. “Who’s helping you?” he asked, his voice quieter now, cautious—not out of suspicion, but out of the sheer weight of the answer he sensed was coming.

Hermione didn’t flinch, though her smirk was more protective than playful, more of a shield than a taunt. “Severus Snape,” she said simply, as if the name didn’t carry centuries of ghosts between them.

For a long moment, Harry could only stare, as if trying to reconcile the name she had just spoken with the man he remembered. Then, unexpectedly, a sharp laugh burst from his chest—half disbelief, half stunned amusement. It escaped him before he could temper it, the sound echoing oddly in the quiet office, rich with irony. His eyes were wide, eyebrows raised almost comically as he shook his head, the corners of his mouth twitching into a disbelieving smile. “Ah,” he finally managed between chuckles, “so that’s where he disappeared to.”

Hermione tilted her head, her brow furrowing as she regarded him. “I’m not sure I follow,” she said carefully, confusion creeping into her voice.

Harry dragged a hand through his hair, the laughter fading but not the astonishment. “I’ve been visiting him in St Mungo’s—every week, actually—for the past year. No one else really went, but I kept checking in, even when he didn’t respond much. And then five months ago, I turned up and he was just... gone. Vanished. The healer wouldn’t say much at first, just that his emergency contact had come and signed the release.”

His eyes settled on her with new clarity, piecing things together faster now. “That was you.”

Grimmauld - 2001 - Severus

The parchment glared at him with the smug insolence of something that should be utterly beneath his notice, yet had, somehow, managed to gain dominion over his entire morning. It wasn’t merely paper—it was judgment incarnate, a silent indictment that had no business holding so much weight. Severus Snape, survivor of two wars, the Dark Lord’s inner circle, and the crushing indignity of adolescent idiocy at its most insufferable, now found himself staring down a single page of stationary as if it might explode into snakes. Each curl of the ink mocked him, each blank space dared him to speak when all he wanted was silence. He could have penned a thousand potions essays with more ease and fewer existential crises. Yet now, with his wand idle in his lap and drafts discarded around him like battlefield corpses, he glared at that parchment with a kind of loathing reserved for enemies far more formidable. It was not merely that the words eluded him—it was that the act of writing to Minerva felt like something sacred and irreversibly raw, like stitching shut a wound with one’s own teeth. The letter demanded more than his signature. It demanded admission: that he had lived. That he had survived. And that survival came at the mercy of a girl who had no business still standing either.

He had made a deal, of course—a reckless, begrudging, emotionally fraught arrangement that he’d agreed to in a moment of unguarded humanity. Hermione would brave her fears, peel herself away from the safe confines of solitude and try, just once, to reconnect with someone from the fractured remains of their old world. In return, he would reach out to Minerva—would admit he was alive, functional, and, most damnably, under the care of the girl who had once been a student and now sat uncomfortably at the intersection of penance and salvation. The idea had seemed balanced when spoken aloud, pragmatic even, but now, in the pallid light of the morning, it felt like a farce. He sat in the half-shadowed study, his wand limp in his lap, as a battalion of failed attempts littered the floor like casualties. They whispered at him, those crumpled parchments—mocking, accusing. Coward, they said. Hypocrite. You expect bravery from her but cannot scrawl three sentences of truth. And he loathed it. Loathed the way his pride warred with his guilt, the way his fingers trembled not from pain, but from the crushing sense that once the words were written, there would be no undoing them. The burden of survival was already intolerable. To speak it aloud—to confirm it—felt like desecrating the dead.

The letter he finally sent was sharp only in the way a blade dulled from overuse still cut deep. The ink was uneven where his hand had hesitated, not from pain—though that lingered always—but from the heaviness of what it meant to write at all. There was no flourish, no pleasantry, no apology. It read simply:

Minerva.

I am awake. Miss Granger has taken on the role of caretaker, apparently the only soul fool enough to remain listed as my emergency contact. I find this troubling. A girl who already bore more of the war than most grown men should not have to shoulder me too. But here we are. I did not ask for her help. I also did not refuse it.

If you wish to see that I remain intact, you may visit. Grimmauld Place—Potter’s old inheritance, now hers. No doubt you’ll find this entire situation ridiculous. You wouldn’t be wrong.

—Severus.

He wheeled himself across the dim corridor that separated his study from the narrow stairwell, transferring with well-practised movements into the lift that creaked its way down to the kitchen. Grimmauld had truly been transformed. The reek of dust and despair that once clung to its walls had been scrubbed clean, replaced with soft lemon oil and the faintest undertone of sandalwood. The mouldy curtains were gone, the wallpaper stripped, the ancestral shadows driven into corners by light and books and the stubborn will of a girl who refused to live in a tomb. And yet, despite the renovations, despite the warmth Hermione had poured into every corner, Severus still felt the echo of age and ghosts in his bones when he crossed the threshold, but the kitchen, thanks to Hermione’s fastidious reworking, was warm—sterile in structure but lived-in in its details. He rolled into his downstairs wheelchair and made his way to the battered old perch where Spot, Hermione’s absurdly tiny barn owl, blinked at him with wide, slightly bewildered eyes. Severus regarded the creature with the kind of suspicion usually reserved for cursed artefacts. Spot was no larger than a large mug, all downy fluff and startled dignity. Tying the letter to its spindly leg felt like affixing diplomatic orders to a sparrow.

"Go on, then," he muttered, offering the owl a morsel of encouragement and just the faintest edge of fondness. Spot blinked at him once, fluffed his feathers as if offended by the doubt, and launched himself with a chaotic flutter of wings through the small open window Hermione had spelled for just this purpose. The creature was graceless in flight but determined—he would get there.

Severus was still staring after the owl’s flight when the Floo roared to life above—distinct and unmissable even from the floor below. The deep whoosh of emerald flame echoed faintly down the stone stairwell and bloomed like a pulse in the centre of his chest. A tremor of old magic brushed his senses, not harsh but insistent. It was a sound he’d learned to dread, a signal not of news but of intrusion. He exhaled sharply, closed his eyes for a moment, and prepared himself for whatever storm had just stepped out of the fire.

And then her voice called out. “Severus.”

Something in him, something he had long ago buried beneath layers of cynicism and self-preservation, stirred at the sound of his name carried on her voice. It was unguarded, unforced—spoken not with obligation but familiarity—and the way it wrapped around the syllables, soft and sure, rattled him more than he cared to admit. It was the first time she had addressed him directly in days, and the absence had not gone unnoticed. He had missed it—her voice, her presence, even her insufferable need to mother every broken thing she touched—and that quiet realisation pressed against the old scarred places in his chest like a whisper of warmth against frostbitten skin. He swallowed the ache that bloomed in its wake, furious at his own sentimentality, and curled his lip inwards as though sneering at himself could banish it entirely. Foolishness, all of it. And yet, it remained.

“Severus,” she called again, closer now, her voice tight, tinged with that breathless urgency that curled in just before a panic took root. It wasn’t loud, but it cut through the quiet like a trembling thread of unravelling tension. He recognised it instantly—the way her voice pitched upward ever so slightly, the way the edges frayed as though held together by sheer will. It was the same sound she’d made in the weeks after her return, when the world felt too large and she too small to move through it without flinching. It made him still, entirely, the kettle forgotten for a moment as the tone echoed through his chest. She was holding herself together—but only just.

He wheeled himself to the door, the rubber treads of his chair catching ever so slightly on the uneven flagstones, and called out, voice carefully modulated, “I’m in the kitchen, Hermione.” As the syllables left his mouth, he winced inwardly. The softness in his tone, the inflection that hinted at something gentler—something closer to comfort than command—betrayed him in a way that left a sour taste on his tongue. He might as well have thrown open the doors of his guarded psyche and invited her in for tea. Bloody fool. That tone didn’t belong to him. Not anymore. Not since the war. Not since regret had carved itself into his marrow. And yet, there it was, echoing between them before she even entered the room. It unsettled him more than he dared admit.

He was Severus Snape. He didn’t get soft. He was sharp edges and cold logic, a man who had carved his survival out of sacrifice and shadow. And yet, here he stood—well, sat—summoning the kettle with the same care a mother might summon comfort for a feverish child. Making tea, of all things. Not because he particularly fancied it, and certainly not because it tasted pleasant. But because he knew—without needing to be told—that she would be exhausted. That the simple act of cupping something warm in her hands might tether her to this world a little longer. That ritual mattered when everything else was falling apart.

He told himself it was practical. Efficient. A way to avoid chaos later. It had nothing to do, he insisted, with the way her absence had left the house feeling colder. Nothing to do with how deeply her silence over the past few days had scraped across his chest like an old wound reopening. Nothing to do with how his hands had stilled the moment he heard the Floo and recognised her voice. The truth was harder. Uglier. That it was relief he felt. It was the kind of bone-deep easing that came not with joy, but with the end of waiting. The end of silence. And Merlin help him, but he had missed her—missed the brightness she brought into rooms, even when it was dulled by grief. Missed the sound of her steps, the way her magic curled gently around the edges of his own. And that truth—that quiet, damning truth—made him hate himself just a little more.

But when he turned and saw her enter the kitchen—sleeves wrinkled like she’d slept in them, face drawn and pallid, eyes rimmed red and swollen from crying—something deep in Severus’s gut twisted unpleasantly. She looked small. Tired. Fragile in a way that made his teeth grind with helpless rage. And then he saw Potter behind her, that ever-present ghost of youth and misplaced hope trailing like a shadow, and all of that unspoken emotion coalesced into fury. His sneer came fast, honed and sharp as a dagger. It was instinct, a shield forged over decades. He welcomed it. Welcomed the sting of it curling across his face, masking the deeper, more dangerous things he could not afford to name—like concern. Like the faint, treacherous flicker of relief that she’d returned at all.

"Potter," Severus drawled, his voice laced with the disdain that had once been second nature, though the sharpness lacked its former venom. He didn’t look directly at him—instead, his eyes found Hermione’s, softer, more searching. "I made you tea," he said, quieter now, a concession wrapped in the guise of routine. There was no flourish in the offering, no expectation of gratitude, but when Hermione smiled—a small, exhausted thing—he felt it settle somewhere inside him like warmth in winter.

"Thank you," she said, fingers curling around the warm mug he passed her, and for a brief, flickering moment, the tension in her shoulders seemed to ease.

"Hello, Professor," Potter added, his tone polite, laced with familiarity but absent of old challenge. Severus turned a flat look toward him, schooling his expression to something unreadable, though internally he winced. Of all the things he regretted that morning—urging Hermione to reconnect with someone from the old world ranked high. Higher still when that someone arrived bearing smiles and memories and the unbearable weight of hope.

He told himself he wasn’t watching, that he didn’t notice the way her shoulders unknotted slightly when the warmth of the mug seeped into her skin, or how her eyes briefly closed in something close to relief after the first sip. But he had seen it all. The subtle way her lips curved, the nearly imperceptible lift of her brows when she realised it was exactly the way she liked it—honey stirred in first, no lemon, steeped precisely three minutes. He hadn’t asked. She hadn’t told him. Yet he’d memorised it, filed it away somewhere between potion ingredient ratios and spells lost to time. And now, without ever meaning to, he wielded it like magic.

Apparently, this was who he had become—a man who not only memorised the exact way she took her tea, but who prepared it each time with a silent precision that bordered on reverence. There was a strange intimacy to it, this quiet act of observation and care, done without fanfare, without expectation. It was the way he noted the precise moment the water should be poured, the way the honey needed to dissolve before the teabag was removed, and the exact temperature she preferred—hot, but not scalding, soothing rather than sharp. He told himself it was efficiency, routine, an idle thing to fill the silence of their lives, but he knew it was more than that. It was a ritual. A connection. A way of saying, without ever needing to speak, that he saw her. That even in her silence, even in her tremors and ghosts and brittle smiles, he saw her—and he remembered.

He extended the cup to Potter with a tightness in his jaw that conveyed every ounce of reluctance the gesture deserved. The muscles around his mouth twitched, a reflexive motion born not from politeness but from the simple tyranny of shared civility. He handed it over like one might present a volatile potion—carefully, dispassionately, but with the underlying sense that something could explode at any moment. Potter, insufferably oblivious or simply too used to such expressions from him, grinned in return, his boyish face still wearing the lines of a man who had survived too much. The sight irritated Severus more than he could justify.

They sat, the three of them, suspended in a silence thick with unsaid apologies, unspoken grief, and the brittle thread of a connection not yet re-forged but stubbornly refusing to sever. It was not a silence born of comfort but of necessity, like the stillness in the eye of a storm. Hermione’s hands, trembling ever so slightly, wrapped around her mug with a desperation that did not escape his notice. She clutched it not for warmth, but for grounding—as if the weight of ceramic and heat could tether her to the present. Her thub moved slowly, rhythmically, along the rim, a self-soothing gesture that whispered of too many nights spent alone, of too many mornings greeted without peace. Severus watched, said nothing, but memorised it all. He always did.

When she spoke, her voice had that brittle lilt to it, too bright, too carefully modulated—like cracked glass held together by willpower alone. “Harry offered to help, too.” The words came out a touch too fast, laced with a deliberate cheeriness that made Severus’s knuckles tighten ever so slightly against the warm ceramic of his mug.

He didn’t respond right away. Instead, he observed her with the same quiet intensity he reserved for volatile potions. The slight twitch of her shoulder betrayed her nerves, and there, in the flicker of her eyes, was the silent question—was it alright? Was he angry? She had taken a step forward and now stood bracing herself for a blow that wouldn’t come, not from him. She shouldn’t have needed his approval, and yet, she waited for it.

Then Potter’s voice followed, quieter, the kind of voice that came from someone who had grown old far too young. “She did mention that you’re going to help too, sir.” There was no edge in his tone, no provocation—just a tired kind of hope, the kind that asked nothing more than not to be pushed away.

Severus’s brows drew together. He studied the man across from him, looking for arrogance or self-righteousness. But there was only weariness. A kind of shared fatigue that Severus recognised all too well. The look of someone who had buried too many people, who had nothing left to prove.

“She hardly left me a choice,” Severus said after a long pause, though the bite he had intended was softened, diffused into something quieter—something that felt less like resistance and more like reluctant reverence. The words hung in the air, strangely gentle, surprising even himself in how little effort he made to lacerate the moment with sarcasm or scorn.

Hermione’s laugh came like a burst of startled light through a fog. It was not rehearsed or polished, but raw and immediate—a breathy, unexpected sound that seemed to rise from a place she had forgotten still existed. She clapped a hand over her mouth as if she could catch the sound and shove it back inside, her eyes wide, not with shame but with something far more fragile: wonder, perhaps, or guilt for the brightness she had dared to feel.

“Sorry,” she whispered, the corners of her eyes glittering not just from unshed tears, but from the flicker of something dangerously close to hope. Her voice trembled slightly, not from fear, but the effort of holding together all the pieces she had spent years trying to stitch into silence.

“No,” Harry said, his voice low and warm with something honest and unguarded. He smiled, but not the grin he had learned to wear for newspapers and battlefields—this one was smaller, truer. “I’m glad she didn’t.”

Severus exhaled slowly, the breath dragging from him like a sigh pulled from the very base of his lungs, reluctant and full of resignation. The line he spoke was dry, sardonic, laced with the kind of self-awareness that came only after decades of regret. "I suppose we’ve all made worse decisions," he murmured, the irony bitter on his tongue. His voice did not crack, but something in it wavered, like a string pulled too tight.

The silence that followed held the solemn gravity of a shared confession. It was not tense, but heavy—thick with everything said and unsaid, a stillness born not of comfort but of exhaustion. They sat steeped in the kind of quiet that comes only after grief has been named aloud. Harry reached into his coat with slow, reverent movements and withdrew a small, timeworn photograph. His fingers lingered on it, not from indecision, but from something deeper—memory clinging to flesh, to skin that remembered the warmth of a hand no longer there. He placed it on the table, the motion careful, as though the image might shatter. The photograph slid across the polished wood with a whisper, and the gesture alone carried the weight of a funeral rite.

His voice, when it came, was hushed and hollowed by time. “I found this in Sirius’s journal,” he murmured, eyes not quite meeting theirs. “Been keeping it in my wallet ever since. It’s the only picture I have of us together.” His glance flickered to Hermione, then landed on Severus. “She said something personal might help.” The final words came out quietly, as if naming them aloud threatened to unravel him. He didn’t elaborate further, didn’t need to. His fingers trailed briefly against the edge of the photo, reluctant to let go, and the unspoken ache that filled the room said more than anything he could have added. 

Severus didn’t touch the photograph. He stared at it instead, as if doing so from a distance might insulate him from the sudden, visceral blow it delivered. Sirius Black, frozen mid-laugh, his arm thrown casually around a younger Harry who beamed at the camera like the world had never broken him. They looked like joy incarnate—unburdened, alive. It should have angered him, should have triggered the bitterness that always accompanied the memory of Black, but instead, the image clawed its way beneath his defences with startling ease. There was something disarming in it—something that twisted deep in Severus’s gut, a recognition of what had been lost, of what could never be again.

Hermione leaned in slowly, her voice barely more than breath against the weight of memory between them. “I remember that day. Just before fifth year. We stayed up all night in the drawing room, telling ghost stories. Sirius made cocoa.”

Her words were soft, but they coloured the image with life—her memory painting the edges of the photo in something warmer, something sacred. He didn’t respond at first. His nod, when it came, was slow and weighted, his gaze still locked on the past playing out in that inch of frayed paper. Then, at last, he looked away—not from disdain, but from the ache of it.

“It will help,” he said eventually, his voice quiet, scraped raw from the inside. The admission tasted like surrender, like the reluctant parting of old scars. “She’s right.”

The Floo roared to life again, emerald flames flaring with sudden force in the drawing room across the corridor. The green glow bled through the crack beneath the door, casting slithering shadows across the newly papered hall in a way that made the house feel older than its renovations allowed. Severus heard it instantly—the unmistakable burst of displaced magic, echoing through the bones of Grimmauld Place like a memory being shaken loose. It wasn’t just noise—it was a rupture, an unwelcome crack in the fragile cocoon of silence he and Hermione had cultivated over months of hesitant routine and quiet understanding. The sound threaded through his nerves, cold and electric, setting his teeth on edge. The kettle behind him hissed with mounting insistence on the hob, but he no longer heard it. His gaze fixed on the kitchen doorway, and a heaviness settled in his chest that had little to do with exhaustion and everything to do with dread.

He didn’t wait for Hermione to call out again. With grim determination, Severus turned and rolled himself from the warmth of the kitchen, crossing the threshold into the corridor with practiced, clinical precision. The chair lift creaked beneath him as he transferred, mechanical and methodical. He was learning this new body, this altered reality, and though he loathed every inch of it, he moved with unflinching purpose. Because he had no other choice. Because being good at surviving was the only thing that had ever kept him alive.

He heard Hermione’s voice, quick and flustered, her words tumbling over each other in a cascade of anxious explanation. Harry’s responses followed close behind—measured, careful, but unmistakably defensive. Severus could imagine the way she was wringing her hands, the way her brows knit together when she was nervous, and the slightly breathless edge that crept into her voice when she tried too hard to be calm. Their footsteps, unsteady and light, scrambled after him across the flagstones of the hall. The air shifted, crackling faintly with anticipation and a tension that clung to the walls like a storm building offshore. They were trying, he could tell. Trying to shield him from what came next. But there was no stopping it. The storm was already here.

When he reached the entrance hall and wheeled himself into the Floo room, Severus braced himself like a soldier stepping onto a battlefield he had no desire to face. The flames in the hearth had barely dimmed when her voice, clipped and unmistakable, sliced through the air.

"Severus," said Minerva McGonagall, her tone frost-sharp, each syllable stiff with disappointment. She stood rigid, every line of her spine set with authority—regal in her disapproval, immovable as a statute of justice.

"Minerva," he said, his voice smooth but carved from stone, each syllable taut with an old, unyielding tension. He inclined his head in a gesture more habit than courtesy, his expression unreadable, cloaked in a neutrality honed through decades of necessity. There was no warmth in it—only the weight of shared battles, betrayals, and the irrevocable scars left behind by time and war. It wasn’t disdain, but neither was it affection; it was the brittle civility of two soldiers who had once stood on the same side of a ruined field and now met again under different terms, both too tired to pretend otherwise.

Behind him, he felt the pulse of Hermione’s magic enter the room, brushing against his senses like an anxious heartbeat. It trembled with uncertainty, the kind that clung to skin and breath. Even before he turned, he knew she was on the edge of panic—her presence sharp and fragile in the way glass sang before it shattered.

Minerva’s gaze shifted slowly from Severus to Hermione, and it remained as unyielding as a blade drawn in judgment. The line of her mouth compressed further, her disapproval radiating from every angle of her posture. Her voice, when it came, was cold enough to crack glass.

"Miss Granger," she said, each syllable clipped with rigid control, "would you care to explain under what authority you’ve removed a Hogwarts staff member from hospital care without informing a single soul? Or do you now count kidnapping among your many academic accomplishments?"

The accusation landed like a curse to Hermione’s chest—stunning, unrelenting, leaving her breathless in its wake. Her spine locked in place with a rigid snap, shoulders drawn back by instinct more than control, as though steeling herself against an oncoming blow. The newly polished floorboards beneath her felt treacherous now, shifting like ice, and her boots betrayed the panic in her step with an awkward scrape that echoed too loudly in the hall. Cold stole through the space, seeping beneath her skin, replacing the fleeting comfort of familiar stone with something ancient and unkind. Her peripheral vision dimmed at the edges as panic pulled her inward, narrowing her focus to the hammering of her pulse and the sting of shame blooming behind her eyes. She grasped at the hem of her jumper, fingers curling until her knuckles whitened, the worn wool biting into her skin with every twist. It wasn’t just Minerva’s words—it was the weight of who had spoken them, the sharpness of that once-welcomed authority now carved into a blade, dragging long-buried shame up from the place she thought she’d buried it deepest.

Severus reacted without thinking, his body moving before the intent had fully formed. One moment he was frozen, the next he was at her side, his hand encircling her wrist with a steadiness that belied his usual restraint. The grip was not harsh—it was anchoring. A lifeline thrown into rising water. There was no flourish, no spoken assurance, but the meaning behind it was unmistakable. It was not about defence or comfort. It was presence. It was solidarity. His scarred fingers curled gently around her pulse, grounding her in a storm she hadn’t seen coming. And though she flinched at the contact—surprise and instinct both too raw—she didn’t retreat. Her posture stilled, breath hitched, and for a heartbeat suspended in time, something shifted. He made no grand speech, no dramatic stand. He simply remained, the silent promise of shared battle lines drawn in the tremble of her skin. As long as he could reach for her, she would not be left to stand alone.

Minerva’s eyes, ever piercing, followed the subtle shift with calculating precision. Her lips thinned into a severe line, every muscle in her face drawn taut with disapproval, the hard press of tension creasing the skin around her mouth and eyes. There was no mistaking the weight behind her stare—it was not simply judgement, but disappointment cloaked in formality, disappointment from a woman who had seen too much to be easily swayed and expected more from both of them. The silence she held was louder than any reprimand, and Severus felt it settle across the room like a layer of frost.

"I… I didn’t kidnap him," Hermione stammered, eyes fixed on the floor. Her voice shook like a child before the Headmistress’s desk, stripped of the fire he’d seen her wield so often. "He was discharged to me. I—I’m listed as his emergency contact. That’s all."

Minerva scoffed, her voice cool and biting. "So, spiriting someone away from St Mungo’s without notifying a single soul isn’t kidnapping? Five months of silence, Miss Granger. Five months of uncertainty. That is your idea of protocol?"

Hermione’s posture wilted, her shoulders curling inward as if to shield herself from the onslaught of Minerva’s words. Her breath hitched sharply, stuttering as her chest rose in shallow bursts, the rapid cadence of someone on the precipice of panic. Severus recognised it instantly—the tremor in her fingers, the glazed sheen overtaking her eyes, the rigid tension bleeding into every muscle of her body. The spiral was beginning, the slow and inevitable collapse inward, and he knew that if left unchecked, it would pull her under. He moved before thought caught up, his voice cutting through the air like a blade. Cold, deliberate, and merciless in its precision, it snapped across the room before Minerva could add another word to the mounting damage.

"She doesn’t need to explain herself to you," he said, voice like broken glass, every edge honed to precision. "She did not abduct me. She gave me sanctuary. It was my decision to remain silent. She offered. I declined."

Minerva blinked, her posture rigid and her eyes narrowing, though the crack in her composure was telling. The accusation she had fired toward Hermione seemed to ricochet back toward her, the weight of Severus’s interruption ringing with unexpected authority. Her lips parted slightly, as if to retort, but the words faltered before forming fully.

"She should have—" she tried again, but the edge in her voice was blunted now, hollowed out by the sharpness of Severus’s defence.

"No," he said, his tone ironclad and unwavering, colder than any spell he'd ever cast. "She acted as I instructed. She honoured my wishes. You may disagree with my choices, but they were mine to make. And she respected them."

Minerva faltered then, the rigid line of her shoulders softening, her eyes flickering with something dangerously close to regret. The unshakable mask of Headmistress cracked, if only for a moment—but it was already too late. The words had hit their mark. The damage was done, and Hermione had already fled the battlefield they’d turned their hallway into.

Hermione didn’t walk—she fled, her departure sharp as a blade’s edge, slicing through the tension that had settled thick and stifling in the corridor. Her curls flew behind her like an unravelled banner, the trailing echo of her panic more visceral than any shout. She bolted for the stairs, boots hitting the floor with clipped desperation, ascending with such ferocity it was as though she could outpace the shame curling tight around her ribs.

Severus remained rooted for a heartbeat, his knuckles white on the armrests of his chair, breath trapped somewhere between fury and despair. Then, slowly, deliberately, he turned his face back toward Minerva. The look he fixed on her was devoid of fire but steeped in something far colder—a finality as immovable as winter stone. His eyes, black and unreadable, locked on hers as if carving an epitaph into whatever was left between them.

"Leave," he said, the word carved from exhaustion and something older—something closer to resignation than command. His voice, low and toneless, was stripped of all the fire and precision that had once defined him, leaving behind only the hollow echo of a man who had reached the end of what he could defend.

He didn’t turn to see if she obeyed. He didn’t need to. The silence that followed was answer enough, and it rang louder than footsteps.

He wheeled after Hermione with urgency that had nothing to do with his physical state. It was instinct now—this need to find her, to anchor her before she disappeared into herself again.

He found her in her room, curled tightly beneath Sirius’s worn leather jacket—the one she had claimed like armour, as if the ghost of him still lingered in its folds. Her fingers were knotted into the lapels, white-knuckled and trembling, as though letting go would unmoor her entirely. The jacket dwarfed her, swamping her frame, the scent of tobacco, leather, and sandalwood clinging faintly to it, like a memory fighting not to fade. The music on the record player cracked and fizzled through the static of age, Freddie Mercury’s voice low and aching, a lament more than a song. Her sobs were muffled into the pillow beneath her cheek, but even so, they came in waves—quiet, broken things that shook her small frame, grief bleeding from her like slow smoke curling from dying embers.

Severus crossed the threshold without a word, the sound of his wheelchair hushed by the thick rug beneath. The air was heavy, not with magic but with sorrow—dense and pressing, like rain moments before it fell. He did not announce himself. He didn’t need to. Her pain filled the room, soaked into the walls. For a long moment, he simply watched her, not out of coldness but reverence, as if bearing witness might somehow ease what could not be soothed. And then, when the silence between sobs stretched thin, when the air itself trembled with the weight of it all, he spoke—his voice low, quieter even than the fading music, a murmur carved from empathy he no longer knew how to show.

"You did nothing wrong, little witch," he murmured, his voice low and rough around the edges, more felt than heard. His hand hovered, twitching slightly, caught between hesitation and instinct, aching to reach out, to brush a curl from her damp cheek, to place something steady between her and the slow-burning ache that had consumed her from the inside out. But he didn’t move. He simply stayed, rooted beside her as if his presence alone might anchor her to the earth again. He watched the way her shoulders quivered with each breath, the way her fingers clutched at leather like it could keep her from shattering entirely, and still he said nothing more. Words would not fix this. Only time, and perhaps the knowledge that someone remained beside her when the rest of the world had forgotten how to stay.

Grimmuald - 2001 - Hermione

Grimmauld Place had grown quiet again, too quiet, the sort of hush that settles over grief, not peace. It pressed in from the walls like fog, seeping into the bones of the house and the hearts that tried to keep beating within it. Hermione lay curled beneath the weight of Sirius’s old leather jacket, as if the memory of him stitched into its seams could hold her together. But no warmth lingered in the fabric today—only guilt.

Severus’s words echoed in her mind, gentle and low: You did nothing wrong, little witch. But they rang false. Not because she thought he was lying, but because she couldn’t believe him. Not when Minerva’s voice had flayed her raw in the drawing room, not when her own memories offered their crueler verdict.

She had failed. That was the truth she could not unhear. No matter how many times Harry or Severus tried to soothe her, the rot was already inside her, carved deep into the marrow of her bones, looping on repeat through every sleepless night. If she had been stronger, faster, smarter—Fred wouldn’t have died. If she had reacted quicker, cast the right spell, screamed louder—maybe the wall wouldn’t have collapsed. The scream she remembered most vividly had not been her own, but George’s—raw, inhuman, the sound of a soul breaking apart in the smoke-filled chaos. She had heard that scream in her dreams ever since.

But it hadn’t started with Fred. No, the guilt stretched further back—to the Ministry, to the cavernous echo of the Death Room, to Sirius’s face disappearing behind that veiled curtain. She had been helpless then, sprawled on the stone floor with Dolohov’s curse burning through her chest and ribs, too weak to move, too slow to stand. She had watched Harry scream. She had watched Sirius vanish. And ever since, it had haunted her: if she had only fought harder, if she had only endured the pain—would she have made it to her feet? Could she have reached him in time? Saved him before he slipped beyond reach?

The list of names that followed—Remus, Tonks, Lavender, Colin—folded themselves into the layers of blame she wore like a second skin. She bore them all in silence, a catalogue of the dead she believed she’d failed.

Minerva’s words hadn’t just cut— they had unravelled something vital. They reached into the centre of Hermione's carefully constructed resilience and tore it loose, leaving her exposed and raw. You should have told someone. You acted alone. You took him without consent. Each word echoed like a gavel strike, merciless in its certainty, unforgiving in its implications. They weren’t merely accusations—they were truths she had whispered to herself in her lowest moments, now spoken aloud by someone she had once admired. And though Severus had defended her, Hermione could not help but feel that Minerva had said aloud what everyone else was too polite or too kind to admit.

And the worst part was that Hermione agreed. She had acted alone. She always did. Because trusting others with her pain felt impossible, and she carried her grief like a martyr, believing that maybe if she bore enough of it, someone else might be spared. But that hadn’t saved anyone. Not Sirius, whose death she had watched unfold through the blur of pain and helplessness. Not Fred, whose loss was flung in her face like a curse she would never stop bleeding from. Both names were etched deep, stitched into her shame, wrapped around the ache that lived at the centre of her chest. They weren’t just names; they were moments—frozen, unbearable, always a breath too late.

The image of Ron flashed behind her eyes, unbidden. It had been weeks after the final battle, when the funerals were over and the Ministry had stopped burning. She had found him in the Burrow’s garden, slumped against a tree with a bottle of Ogden’s clutched in one hand and bitterness hanging off his every word.

“You know it’s your fault, right?” he had slurred, not looking at her. “Fred. If you’d just moved faster. Got him out. But no, you were too busy playing war hero.”

The words had cut deeper than any hex. And even after he’d sobered and tried to take them back, something had broken inside her. Something she hadn’t been able to piece together again. Not really. So she had run.

She fled to Australia like a woman haunted, clutching a desperate hope that the distance might dull the memories, that an ocean might muffle the screams still lodged in her throat. She found her parents’ graves under foreign skies, names etched in stone that didn’t even match the people they once were. Wendell and Monica Wilkins. Not Granger. Not Mum and Dad. It felt like burying strangers—twice.

She spent the years after in silence so thick it became its own kind of grief. Days passed unmarked, the walls of her small flat closing in as she screamed into pillows, her throat raw from sobs no one ever heard. She couldn’t bear the sound of her own name, so she stopped using it. Couldn’t look in the mirror, so she stopped keeping one. The world outside her window turned and turned, but she remained locked in place, a ghost clinging to skin.

Now she was back in Britain, back in Grimmauld Place, but the ghosts had followed. They hadn’t been left behind. They had only waited, patient and silent, until she returned.

The days blurred. The music stopped playing. The warmth Severus had coaxed into her room faded into grey shadows. She stayed in bed, wrapped in cotton and grief, only the barest thread of guilt tethering her to meals she couldn’t eat and voices she couldn’t respond to.

Severus came every morning. Sometimes with tea, sometimes with a muttered insult about sloth, sometimes with silence that wrapped around her more gently than words ever could. He never pressed, only sat with her for a while, watching her without judgment. He always left the window cracked. Always left the lamp burning low.

Harry came too. Less often, but always kind. He told her about Ginny, about Teddy, about the tiny flat they’d fixed up in Godric’s Hollow. He talked like they were just friends on a quiet evening, not two survivors trying to glue themselves back together. He told her stories that made her laugh once—just once—and he’d grinned like it was a victory.

They both tried, again and again, their approaches different but equally persistent, threading their concern through the brittle silence Hermione kept wrapped around herself like a shroud.

But even with their efforts, even with their unwavering patience, it wasn’t enough. The spiral inside her mind grew tighter, like an invisible noose around her thoughts, suffocating clarity and reason alike. She couldn’t hold onto time. Hours slipped past like sand through broken fingers. She existed in fragments—between dreams of falling stones and phantom screams, between the taste of tea she never finished and the quiet scrape of Severus’s chair against the wooden floor. The guilt was relentless, its weight increasing with each breath, every memory sharp enough to draw blood. Her thoughts circled the same accusations, endlessly repeated: You should have run faster. You should have screamed louder. You should have saved them.

She stopped opening the blinds. She stopped counting the hours. She let herself disappear beneath the folds of Sirius’s jacket, hiding from a world she had failed too many times.

When sleep finally claimed her, it brought no peace. Her dreams were riddled with ash and ruin—of walls crumbling under the weight of war, of spells shrieking through the air, of red and green light flashing like thunder before the storm. She dreamt of rubble, of flagstones stained with blood and the sickening crunch of stone against bone. Fred was there, always reaching, always just out of reach, and her limbs refused to move. Her knees locked. Her voice failed. And then there was nothing but silence, broken by the echo of a scream that never made it past her throat. She would wake with the sound still trapped in her lungs, her chest aching with the pressure of all the things left unsaid, all the lives she couldn’t save. Severus would be there, his presence steady if distant, his voice a tether in the dark as he murmured calming words. She hated that she needed him, hated more that he never once asked for anything in return. It felt like penance—having someone see her at her weakest.

What kind of war heroine wakes crying every night? What kind of saviour crawls into bed with guilt still whispering beneath her skin? Two years. Two years, and she was still shattered, still crawling through her own memories like they were broken glass. She was sharing a roof with a man who had survived horrors she couldn’t even fathom, and yet she felt like the more fragile of the two. He didn’t need saving. She did. But she didn’t know how to ask for that.

And then there were dreams of Sirius—raw and cutting in a way memory never could be. She saw herself, younger, angrier, more self-righteous than she had any right to be. It had been Grimmauld Place, sometime between fourth and fifth year. He had been slouched in his chair with a bottle at his side, dark eyes half-lidded with exhaustion, wearing a grin like armour. And she had torn into him. Accused him of clinging to the past, of treating Harry like a stand-in for James, of not growing up like the rest of them. The words had flown out of her like daggers, sharp and unforgiving. And he did nothing but smile at her, a sad, haunted thing and said, “Come back and find me one day, when the blasted war is over, and we’ll talk about what clings to your soul then.”

She had laughed in her sleep, not with mirth but with that brittle edge of disbelief, and then the scream tore out of her—raw, involuntary, and sharp enough to rattle her back to consciousness. It ripped her upright in the bed, her breath stuttering in her throat, her hands trembling with the residue of too many ghosts. The shadows in the room recoiled, and in the stillness that followed, Severus was there—silent and steady, like the grounding weight of the world itself. He always came when the darkness crept too close, when the screams left her breathless, when the dreams stole the little strength she had managed to gather.

And this time, when the sobs rose up and tore through her like glass, she didn’t fight them. She let the tears fall unchecked, let herself unravel against him as he eased onto the edge of the bed and pulled her into the circle of his arms. It was the first time he had held her since she spiralled, since the light in her eyes had flickered and dimmed. She collapsed into him with the kind of exhaustion that came from carrying too much for too long, her fists clutching at his robes like a child begging for something she didn’t know how to name. And he held her—not as a man desperate to fix, not even as a friend, but as someone who understood how it felt to drown beneath the weight of what should have been.

That was it. That moment, cradled in his silence and steadied by his breath, she understood why she had to bring Sirius back. It wasn’t hope or obsession. It was the need to tell him. To finish the conversation that had never truly begun. To show him what had grown, unwanted and unspoken, in the hollow of her chest. She needed him to see the truth of her now, not the sharp-tongued girl from years ago. Because Sirius—like Severus—would understand what it meant to live with your ghosts and carry on breathing anyway. And if she didn’t speak it aloud, if she didn’t face the haunted promise in his last words to her, she feared she would never crawl out of the guilt alive. 

Grimmuald - 2001 - Severus

Severus Snape had long ago mastered the art of enduring the emotional whiplash of others. It was a requirement in the Dark Lord’s court, a survival tactic in Dumbledore’s office, and a daily necessity at Hogwarts. But nothing—nothing—had prepared him for the mercurial storm that was Hermione Granger in the throes of grief.

For two full weeks, she had been a ghost within Grimmauld’s walls. Her room, once filled with warm lamplight and soft music, had become a cavern of silence. Her meals remained untouched. Her voice was buried in the folds of Sirius’s old jacket, wrapped tightly around her as if it were the last fragment of safety she could grasp—less armour now, more a tether to a memory, to a person and time she could never reach again, shielding her not from a war already survived, but from the guilt that continued to wage one within. Severus had tried everything within his limited emotional arsenal—sharpness, silence, sarcasm, even the rare, cautious softness that crept in when he let his guard drop—and none of it reached her.

It wasn’t until a particularly bitter winter night, long after the hearth had gone cold and silence had blanketed the house like fresh snowfall, that she finally broke. The quiet cracked open with a scream that cleaved the air—raw, ragged, and unmistakably human. It wasn’t a sound of fear so much as the sound of something inside her giving way entirely, a soul stretched too thin finally snapping. Severus was moving before he could think, instincts from a lifetime of responding to catastrophe guiding him toward her door, the echo of her anguish still vibrating in his chest. That scream would remain with him, a sound he would hear again and again in the silence of sleepless nights, embedded in the marrow of memory, as tangible and brutal as the mark on her arm she tried so hard to hide.

The sight of her—wide-eyed, gasping, curled in on herself with terror vibrating through her limbs—had struck him harder than any curse ever had. When she reached for him, hands trembling and voice broken, he hadn’t hesitated. He had gathered her into his arms, held her against him as she sobbed and clutched at his shirt like she might drown without it. And in that moment, Severus had felt something shift deep inside—something old, rusted, and unnameable, cracking open beneath her touch.

But it was the morning after that truly disarmed him, not with chaos or confrontation, but with its quiet, bewildering normalcy. He had risen early, the night’s lingering echo of Hermione’s screams still buried in his chest like a bruise, expecting to find silence and closed doors once again. Instead, she walked into the kitchen with her curls tied back, face pale but composed, her eyes carrying the weight of sleepless nights yet somehow clear. She greeted him with a quiet "Good morning" and offered him a small smile—one that held no pretense, no hollow cheer, but something achingly genuine, and Severus, a man who had stared down death and worse, felt his breath stutter.

He didn’t question it; Hermione Granger had always been a storm wrapped in book pages, but the whiplash from her emotional about-face left him stunned. He handed her the coffee—black, two sugars, just as she liked it—and plated her absurd toast: one quarter marmalade, one jam, one butter, and one lemon curd. It had become a ritual by now, part of the quiet language they spoke between silences. She looked at the toast, then at him, and beamed. A real, unguarded, vibrant smile that reached her eyes.

His stomach clenched in a way he hadn't expected. It was not discomfort—he was intimately familiar with discomfort—but something altogether unfamiliar. Something warmer, something dangerous. Something he didn’t have a name for.

He scowled at himself as he buttered his own toast and muttered a curse under his breath, needing something sharp to ground him. Then Potter arrived—because of course he did, just in time to witness Severus’s sanity unravelling. The blasted wizard stepped into the kitchen and blinked in surprise when Hermione greeted him just as warmly and with a genuine smile. 

Potter turned to Severus, brow arched in open confusion. Severus responded with a flat stare and a begrudging shrug as he pushed a cup of coffee across the table toward him. Apparently, this was his life now. Making breakfast for Hermione Granger and Harry bloody Potter. He should have been committed.

The silence stretched companionably for a moment. Severus busied himself with his tea and toast, hoping to return to some semblance of internal equilibrium. And then, as if the last two weeks of collapse and spiralling despair hadn’t occurred, Hermione spoke with absolute clarity and purpose.

“Harry, I’ll need a meeting with Kingsley,” she said, her tone even and decisive. “I need him to approve the ritual that will bring back Sirius. If he says no, tell him I’ll go to Australia and do it there. And then Australia will get the credit for the resurrection. I don’t think he would like that very much.”

Harry blinked again, clearly still recalibrating. “Okay...” he said slowly, glancing between the two of them like he had walked into an alternate dimension.

Severus, meanwhile, stared into his cup, digesting her words with a grim kind of astonishment. It wasn’t the ritual itself that surprised him anymore—Hermione had a way of dragging the impossible into the realm of reality—but the sudden resolve that radiated off her like heat from a fire. This wasn’t the girl who had spent weeks curled into herself, wrapped in guilt and silence. This was something else entirely. A storm gathering.

And Severus knew, perhaps better than anyone alive, what came in the quiet aftermath once the storm had passed—the debris, the shattered remnants of resolve, the raw skin left behind when a soul had spent itself in fire. He had seen it often enough in the eyes of war-worn children, in the silence that followed grief, in his own reflection on too many sleepless nights.

He cleared his throat, not because he had anything particularly important to say, but because he needed something to fill the rising quiet within himself, something to dam the ache in his chest. "You’ve certainly recovered your ambition," he murmured, the words tinged more with reluctant admiration than any true criticism, his tone softer than she was likely used to from him.

She turned to face him, and there was steel behind her gaze, but also something else—something cracked and glinting, like light beneath ice. "This isn’t ambition," she said quietly, her voice steady but stripped of ornament. "It’s necessity."

And that was when Severus realised the true source of this sudden shift. It wasn’t resolution. It was desperation—elegantly masked, yes, but still there, burning beneath her skin. She wasn’t charging forward because she’d healed. She was charging forward because the alternative was unbearable. Because she needed this—needed something to hold onto, to fix, to redeem. To save herself from the ghosts she could not silence.

He sipped his tea and let the silence settle around them again, letting her believe he hadn’t noticed. But he did. And he’d be damned if he let her break again—not without someone to catch her.

Because the truth was, he had begun to care. Against his will, against his instincts, against all reason, he had begun to care. About the little witch with her broken heart and impossible determination. About the way she smiled despite the grief. About the way she brewed her tea and filled the house with music when she thought he wasn’t listening.

He was not a good man. He had never claimed to be. But if Hermione Granger was going to tear through the Veil and resurrect a man from the dead, then by Merlin, Severus Snape would walk into the fire beside her.

Even if it undid him entirely—shattered what little was left of the man he’d become—he would still follow her. Not out of some grand, noble sentiment, but because some stubborn part of her had reached for him in the dark and refused to let go. And though he would never admit it aloud, he found a strange comfort in the quiet certainty that Hermione Granger, for all her broken edges, would fight to keep him tethered to this world, just as fiercely as she fought her own ghosts.

Chapter Text

The Ministry of Magic - Severus & Hermione - 2001

The kitchen at Grimmauld Place still smelled faintly of cinnamon and old parchment, the quiet clink of the morning kettle the only sound to pierce the dense hush. Outside, the January sky was slate grey, its gloom pressing insistently against the windows, as though even the weather understood the gravity that had settled in the house. Severus sat at the table, hands wrapped loosely around a lukewarm cup of tea, his eyes scanning the pages of a forgotten periodical though his mind was adrift.

It was in moments like these—silent, suspended—that he had come to anticipate the storm before it arrived. And sure enough, it came, sharp-heeled and thunder-eyed. Severus had long since learned that a determined Hermione Granger was a formidable force—unyielding, brilliant, terrifyingly tenacious. But Hermione furious? That was something else entirely. That was fire and brimstone; that was a witch who could scorch the world and watch it burn without flinching. Tea and music had always soothed the haunted, quiet storms within her, moments where melancholy clouded her eyes, and memories threatened to swallow her whole. But anger, true and righteous, could not be tamed by gentle cups of Earl Grey or the haunting strains of melancholic music.

Harry, Merlin bless the persistent boy, had tried valiantly to advocate on her behalf. For weeks he had cornered Kingsley Shacklebolt, expounding passionately about the rituals, the careful notes Hermione had meticulously crafted, but the Minister refused to yield. "You cannot bring back the dead," Shacklebolt had repeated like a stubborn mantra, each word a fresh twist of the knife into Hermione’s fragile hope.

It drove her mad, and by extension, Severus himself felt frayed at the edges, worn thin by the taut, crackling energy of her fury. Her frustration seeped into every room of Grimmauld Place, a restless tempest brewing quietly until it inevitably burst.

Thus, it was not at all surprising when Hermione strode into the kitchen that morning, dressed like she was preparing for battle. Black robes, practical boots, and a holstered wand—a warrior's attire. Severus lifted an eyebrow as she moved with purpose, pouring herself a cup of coffee, the bitter scent sharp and grounding. He slid her customary toast across the table, watching her movements with a curious mixture of amusement and admiration.

Severus regarded her with an arched brow, letting his gaze linger on the wand strapped tightly to her thigh and the determined set of her jaw as she sipped her coffee like it was a weapon rather than a comfort. Her eyes were sharp, unreadable, her whole posture brimming with the unspent rage that clung to her like a second skin.

"Planning to raid the Ministry, little witch?" he asked, voice laced with dry amusement as the smirk curled slowly onto his lips, deliberate and knowing. There was no need for further commentary—the answer was written in every line of her body, in the purposeful way she moved, in the silence that thundered between them louder than any declaration.

Hermione's hum of affirmation vibrated with resolve, her fingers tightening slightly around the handle of the coffee mug, knuckles paling as she stared fixedly at the countertop, refusing to meet Severus's gaze, a resolute nod as she cradled her cup. Severus clapped his hands decisively. "Good. I'll be ready in ten minutes."

Her eyebrows shot up, surprise flickering across her features in a way that momentarily softened the hard edge of determination that had been etched there all morning. Her grip on the coffee mug loosened, and she shifted her weight slightly, as though trying to recalibrate the sudden tilt of her expectations. The steam from her drink curled between them, thin and fragrant, carrying a subtle scent of roasted beans and something warmer beneath it—gratitude, perhaps, though unspoken. She looked up at him fully then, eyes wide with a mixture of disbelief and something harder to name. Her voice, when it came, was hushed but resolute, a quiet thread of surprise woven through the steel. "You're coming with me?"

Severus tilted his head, the stern line of his jaw softening fractionally. "If you believe I'll allow you to face those bureaucratic vultures alone, Miss Granger, you are more deluded than I imagined." Without waiting for her response, he rolled his wheelchair from the kitchen, leaving her momentarily speechless.

Hermione stood in the drawing room, her back straight as a board, shoulders squared beneath the fitted lines of her cloak. The fabric shifted faintly with each measured breath she took, betraying the strain coiled beneath her composed exterior. Her wand hand rested lightly on the armrest of the nearest chair, but her fingers tapped an uneven rhythm against the wood, small movements that hinted at the storm barely leashed inside her. Her eyes, sharp and distant, scanned the fireplace with the focus of a soldier waiting for orders.

When Severus entered, she turned to him with a gaze that blazed with determination, but beneath the fire flickered something quieter—uncertainty, fear, and fragile hope worn like a second skin. "Ready?" she asked, her voice a notch lower than usual, steady but laced with the vulnerability she couldn’t quite mask, her eyes holding his with a question far deeper than the word alone could convey.

Severus adjusted the fall of his cloak over his lap, the thick wool brushing against his hands as he gripped the armrests of his chair. He let his face settle into the sharp lines of his old sneer, that reliable mask that had once shielded him in classrooms and corridors and now served as armour against the scrutiny of a world that still didn’t know what to make of him. He held Hermione’s gaze for a breath longer, giving her a single, sharp nod—confirmation, solidarity, and a challenge all at once.

The hearth behind them flared emerald, a rush of flame and magic as the Floo roared to life. Out stepped Harry Potter, brushing soot from his shoulders, his eyes immediately landing on them both. The grin that spread across his face was entirely too delighted, the kind of unguarded joy that made Severus both suspicious and begrudgingly amused. Harry’s gaze flicked between them, taking in their matching expressions of grim determination, and he looked like a child on Christmas morning who’d just spotted the biggest package under the tree.

"Oh, please let me be there when you both tear Kingsley apart," Harry said, gleeful anticipation colouring his voice.

Hermione shot Harry a wry glance, her lips curving just enough to acknowledge the levity before her expression sobered once more. "The more, the merrier," she said dryly, though the steel beneath her tone was impossible to miss. She moved behind Severus, hands firm and unhesitating on the handles of his chair, her grip not merely functional but resolute. Her cloak swept out behind her with a whisper of movement as she turned them both toward the fireplace. With practiced ease, she reached for the Floo powder, fingers moving with the grace of ritual, not routine. Her voice rang out, steady and unwavering, slicing through the room with precise finality as she cast the powder into the flames. "Ministry of Magic."

The Atrium was alive with movement, a bustling sea of witches and wizards. Severus, comfortably settled in his sneer, watched the crowds part instinctively. Whispers rose around them, a buzzing curiosity, heavy with awe and anxiety. Harry leaned towards Hermione, his voice gentle yet reassuring. "Don't worry. Ron's not in today. It's his day off."

Severus watched Hermione release a breath she hadn't realised she was holding, tension easing slightly from her shoulders. Without thinking, Severus reached over and intertwined his fingers with hers, squeezing gently, grounding her. Her startled gaze met his, eyes wide and uncertain, and before he could stop himself, he winked, an idiotic lapse in judgement. But it was worth it—for the radiant, unexpected smile that spread across her face. A smile so genuine it warmed something within him he thought long extinguished.

Behind them, Harry let out a low chuckle, the kind that echoed with a boyish delight far too unrestrained for the situation. The sound grated at Severus’s nerves—not because it was mocking, but because it threatened the fragile dignity of the moment. Heat prickled along the back of Severus’s neck as he felt the weight of that laughter settle around him, and with a grimace of irritation, he forced his expression back into the hardened sneer he wore like a second skin. The corners of his mouth, which had involuntarily curved moments earlier, were dragged back into a line of icy detachment as he stared resolutely ahead, refusing to give Harry the satisfaction of seeing him soften.

They spotted Arthur Weasley weaving through the crowd ahead, his warm expression directed toward someone in the distance, unaware of their presence. Hermione’s spine visibly stiffened, and without a word, she subtly but deliberately changed their path, steering Severus down a less crowded corridor that bypassed any risk of recognition. Severus didn’t question the instinct—he felt it too, the claustrophobic threat of familiarity, of kindly meant concern that scraped too close to wounds still raw.

He tilted his head just enough to glimpse her profile—set jaw, eyes narrowed in silent calculation, shoulders drawn back like a soldier preparing for an ambush. There was no fear in her, but there was hesitation. He recognised it all too well. They were not yet ready to be seen by the people who had once known them as something else—as heroes, as martyrs, as those who had survived by losing pieces of themselves.

He, too, had no interest in exchanging pleasantries or weathering sympathetic glances. He tolerated Potter’s presence—and only because Hermione trusted him without question. That loyalty extended to Severus not through merit, but through quiet grace, and he accepted it as one might accept a cloak offered against the cold: with reluctant gratitude and an awareness of the weight it carried.

As they approached the lifts, the high-pitched chime announced its arrival with a cheerful tone that felt utterly at odds with the tightness curling in Severus’s chest. The brass gates slid open to reveal none other than Cormac McLaggen, his broad grin already spreading across his face the moment his eyes landed on Hermione.

Severus felt her hand twitch on the back of his chair. Her whole body shifted with a rigid, instinctive bracing—shoulders taut, chin lifting in defiance, even as her breath caught short. She didn’t speak, but she didn’t need to. The tension radiating from her was palpable, her wand hand subtly inching closer to her side.

Before either of them could react further, Harry stepped forward like a man rehearsing a well-worn role. With one hand on Severus’s shoulder and the other bracing against the lift’s frame, he blocked McLaggen’s view with deliberate ease.

“Sorry, mate, we’re full,” he said, voice cheerful but firm, his eyes gleaming with just enough warning to keep the fool from pushing his luck.

McLaggen blinked, clearly not expecting resistance, and craned his neck to peer around Harry’s frame. "Hey—is that Granger?" he started, his tone tinged with familiar arrogance.

But the lift doors were already closing, cutting McLaggen off mid-sentence, his smug curiosity silenced by the smooth glide of brass and the soft whoosh of containment charms locking into place. The hiss of magic sealed more than just the doors—it shut away the noise, the intrusion, the unwelcome echo of a world Hermione and Severus had long since outgrown. Inside the lift, a silence settled between the three of them, taut and vibrating with held breath and unsaid words. Hermione exhaled slowly, her fingers loosening slightly on the handle of Severus’s chair, and Severus himself let the corners of his mouth twitch, just barely.

When the lift reached the Minister’s floor, the doors opened with a mechanical grace, revealing a stretch of polished corridor bathed in enchanted light. At the end, the Minister's secretary sat perched behind a desk that gleamed unnaturally, the sterile shine of bureaucracy replacing what little warmth the Ministry had once held. She didn’t bother looking up as they approached, her nails flashing under a floating charm as she filed them with theatrical disinterest.

"Appointment?" she asked, voice as flat and uninterested as the stone tile beneath their feet, her attention fixed more on her cuticle charm than on the trio standing before her.

Hermione stepped forward slowly, each heel of her boots striking the marble floor with quiet finality. The scent of potion oils and old firewhisky clung to her cloak, and the ambient hum of magical wards buzzed faintly beneath the Ministry’s glamour. She leaned in, hands braced lightly against the secretary’s desk, and let her voice cut through the air with surgical precision—crisp, unwavering, and steeped in quiet fury. "Tell Minister Shacklebolt that Hermione Granger is here to collect a debt."

The secretary's hand faltered mid-file. Her eyes snapped up, first catching the glint of Hermione’s wand holster, then registering Severus Snape’s unmistakable silhouette behind her. Her face paled a full shade, and her fingers scrambled for the door handle as she launched herself out of her chair and disappeared into Kingsley’s office without another word.

The silence that followed was thick with anticipation. Ten long minutes passed—measured not by the ticking of any clock but by the weight of held breath and the tension in Hermione’s jaw. Severus sat still beside her, the air between them charged and motionless, until at last the heavy oak doors creaked open, spilling a shaft of dull golden light into the waiting room.

Kingsley sat behind his large, imposing desk, the scent of cedar polish clinging to the air, mixing with the faint, acrid trace of old parchment and ink. The office felt colder than Severus remembered it—more sterile, less alive. Once adorned with photographs and personal tokens from their shared war-torn past, the shelves now held only neat stacks of legislation and department reports. It was as though Kingsley had buried the past beneath layers of bureaucratic order, replacing warmth with efficiency, memory with silence., his posture stiff and authoritative. Dark robes hung precisely from his broad shoulders, and his deep gaze was carefully blank, deliberately distant. He regarded them with a cool, bureaucratic detachment that seemed utterly foreign to the man they had fought alongside in darker times. The war had transformed him, too—turning friends into figures behind desks, memories fading beneath layers of responsibility and exhaustion.

Kingsley’s words rang out with the precision of a scalpel—calm, clipped, and deliberate, each syllable honed to lacerate. "So, you've come to collect a life debt for a dead man," he said, the velvet edge of his voice hiding the steel beneath. The coldness wasn’t just in his tone—it radiated from every part of him, from the tight set of his shoulders to the impassive lines carved into his face. Whatever camaraderie had once existed between them had been carefully filed away under political necessity and forgotten debts.

Hermione inhaled deeply, drawing herself upright with the slow, deliberate grace of someone stepping into battle. Her spine aligned with unwavering intent, shoulders squared beneath the weight of both memory and resolve. She met his gaze without flinching, the light of defiance sparking behind her eyes. The air between them thickened, heavy with unspoken history and barely-restrained anger.

“No, Minister,” Hermione said, her voice low but unwavering, a storm draped in velvet and steel. “I’ve come to collect a debt—to bring Sirius Black back from the Veil.”

Kingsley’s jaw tensed visibly, the sinew in his cheeks tightening as if holding back words too bitter to speak aloud. His gaze narrowed, scrutinising Hermione with a glint of something between caution and disdain. A slight furrow creased his brow, betraying the internal conflict that simmered beneath his composed exterior. When he finally spoke, his voice was clipped and dispassionate, laced with the kind of political detachment that made Severus’s teeth itch. “It sounds rather excessive... for a man the Ministry once branded a murderer.”

Harry’s reaction was instantaneous and visceral—a sharp sound tearing from his throat, raw and indignant, caught between a growl and a protest. His shoulders had stiffened, fists clenched at his sides, the fury beneath his grief bubbling to the surface in an unrestrained surge. Beside him, Severus emitted a low, deliberate growl of agreement, not loud, but heavy with weight. The sound resonated with muted menace, a subtle warning that the former spy did not tolerate duplicity or bureaucratic cowardice. The insult in Kingsley’s words was unmistakable. Whatever falsehoods the Ministry had once circulated, whatever stain the world had cast over Sirius Black’s name, everyone present in that room knew the truth—and so, begrudgingly, did Kingsley Shacklebolt.

Hermione didn’t falter. She advanced, her boots pounding against the polished stone like the beat of a war drum, and planted both hands firmly on the edge of his desk. Her gaze locked onto his with the full weight of every trial she’d endured. “You know damn well Sirius was innocent. You know it, Kingsley. And I’m only going to offer this once—out of decency, out of what we once stood for together. This can happen here, in the British Ministry, or it can happen in Australia. They’re eager for the rights. The ritual will go ahead, regardless. I will bring him back. I owe that to Sirius. And I owe it to Harry.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Harry murmured, his voice soft but edged with unwavering strength, the kind born of war-forged loyalty rather than bravado. His words didn’t waver, but the emotion beneath them rang clear, the echo of loss and love vibrating through the hush of the room.

Hermione didn’t so much as shift. Her posture remained unyielding, her hands braced against the desk like anchors keeping her rooted. She didn’t turn to acknowledge Harry—her focus remained locked, unrelenting, on Kingsley. The pressure of her stare was tangible, fierce and resolute, as though daring the Minister to be the one to look away first.

Beside them, Severus felt something unravel within him, something slow and acute and almost painful in its sincerity. A rare flicker of emotion stirred in his chest, catching him off guard—something astonishingly close to pride, not just in her brilliance or daring, but in her sheer, indomitable will. It smouldered quietly behind his ribs, not a blaze but an ember that refused to extinguish, and it was unbidden, but not unwelcome.

Kingsley leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking beneath him as his hands steepled in front of his face, fingers tapping pensively against one another. His gaze never wavered from Hermione, narrowing with the sharp scrutiny of a man weighing legacy, risk, and potential upheaval. He regarded her not as an ally, but as a volatile force—unpredictable, formidable, and perilous. The kind of ancient, forbidden magic she threatened to wield unnerved him in ways he didn’t want to admit. The creases at the corners of his mouth deepened as he exhaled slowly, his voice laced with measured scepticism and the fatigued caution of someone too seasoned to be easily persuaded. “You expect me to authorise a resurrection ritual under the Ministry’s nose, without sanction, in complete secrecy?”

Hermione’s jaw tightened, a flicker of strain tracing the curve of her throat as she lifted her chin. Her voice, when it came, was steady but laden with a slow-burning fire, every syllable laced with the deliberate cadence of someone who had prepared for this confrontation in countless sleepless hours. “Not behind closed doors—just without interference,” she said, her stare fixed unblinkingly on Kingsley. “I don’t want Unspeakables hovering like scavengers, and I certainly don’t want Healers poking at him like he’s some cursed artefact. This stays between us. Severus, Harry, and I will conduct the ritual—no excess hands, no extra eyes.”

Kingsley moved to speak, lips parting in a half-formed objection, but Hermione didn’t grant him the breath to voice it.

“No.” Her tone cut through the room like a blade. “Sirius will not be prodded, dissected, or treated like a curiosity. When he returns, he’ll be placed in Harry’s and my care. We’ll bring in independent Healers—ones we trust. And furthermore, I expect his exoneration papers on my desk by morning.”

She turned with a decisive grace, her cloak snapping behind her like a banner caught in sudden wind, her stride a bold punctuation to everything she’d declared. The air in the room seemed to recede in her wake, as though it carried the echo of her departure with it. A tense stillness followed, heavy with unspoken fallout.

Kingsley remained frozen, lips parted slightly, a man unaccustomed to being outmanoeuvred and momentarily silenced by the presence of someone else’s power. The quiet that remained clung like smoke after a duel—dense, sharp, and lingering.

Harry exhaled a low whistle, the sound threaded with disbelief and begrudging awe, the faintest trace of a smile playing at his lips. “Well then,” he murmured, his voice glinting with something that might have been pride.

Severus, still poised in his chair, allowed a slow, sardonic smile to unfurl—dry, deliberate, and touched by a rare flicker of warmth. He inclined his head, eyes lingering on the doorway through which she’d vanished. Damn, but the girl had fire—a blaze fierce enough to rattle Ministers and ignite revolutions in the hearts of men who thought themselves long since hardened.

_______________

The ritual - Hermione - 2001

It had taken Hermione two arduous days to meticulously prepare the ritual, each passing hour filled with an exhausting balance between hope and dread, optimism and doubt, weaving together into a heavy burden she carried silently. When they had finally left Kingsley's office, the emotional weight she had been suppressing unravelled spectacularly, crashing over her like an unstoppable wave right in Grimmauld Place's drawing room. She had threatened the Minister of Magic—albeit mildly—but the mere thought of it fractured the fragile composure she had desperately maintained.

Severus, with his quiet intuition, had immediately brewed his calming broth tea, the familiar warmth offering temporary solace. Meanwhile, Harry had cradled her gently on the floor, murmuring soft assurances as her breath hitched erratically, and her tears fell unchecked. Hermione despised her vulnerability, the ease with which she crumbled nowadays. War heroine, they called her; yet, here she was, reduced to an exhausted heap of anxiety and self-reproach on the cold drawing room floor.

Afterwards, Severus had tucked her into bed without a word, an act becoming distressingly frequent. She was deeply reliant on his silent strength, on the comfort of being gently wheeled around in his lap when her body failed to respond, and his unwavering patience compounded her guilt. Every subtle sacrifice Severus made increased her self-loathing, deepened the remorseful ache within her, yet he never voiced a complaint, never showed signs of weariness or resentment. His quiet strength and steadfast support became both her anchor and her torment.

The morning following the confrontation, however, brought unexpected hope—an owl bearing Sirius’s exoneration papers fluttered through the window. Hermione felt a tentative spark reignite inside her, as fragile yet determined as candlelight flickering against a gale. It was enough to pull her forward, compelling her to throw herself into the ritual's meticulous preparations. She reviewed every rune, practised every incantation repeatedly with Severus, ensuring no detail was overlooked, her determination burning fiercely beneath her painstaking focus.

Thus, they eventually found themselves enveloped by the sombre chill of the Death Room, Kingsley's presence a persistent, uncomfortable thorn in Hermione’s already frayed nerves. The Veil pulsed ominously before them, its ethereal curtain whispering indistinctly, sending shivers cascading down her spine. With painstaking precision, Hermione carefully etched each rune into the stone, constructing a pentagram with personal items intimately linked to Sirius at its heart. Harry, solemn and resolute, didn't hesitate as he sliced open his palm, allowing precious drops of his blood—rich with Black lineage through his paternal grandmother—to drip steadily onto each candle. Hermione silently hoped with fervent desperation that it would suffice; she shuddered at the mere notion of approaching Andromeda or, worse, Narcissa and Draco.

Severus moved calmly, wheeling himself to the edge of the carefully drawn pentagram. His unwavering demeanour provided silent reassurance as he meticulously poured the binding potion around the intricate markings and onto a worn shirt Sirius once treasured. Hermione drew in a slow, steadying breath, gripping her wand tightly to mask her trembling hands. Tracing an infinity symbol delicately through the air, she spoke clearly, her voice resonating with power and conviction: "Deos, rogo ut Sirius Black reducatur."

The Veil flickered violently, a gust of wind surging through the chamber like a sigh from the beyond. For a breathless moment, nothing happened, and Hermione's heart stilled painfully. Then, abruptly, the stillness shattered as a figure tumbled from the archway, collapsing face-first onto the cold stone floor, the sound echoing sharply in the quiet.

Harry reacted instantly, moving swiftly forward and gently turning the figure onto its back. A choked sob, raw and desperate, escaped his lips. Hermione rushed forward, her own breath catching sharply in her throat as Kingsley muttered incredulously from behind them, “Well, I'll be damned.” There, sprawled before them, unchanged from the instant he had vanished into the Veil nearly five years ago, lay Sirius Black.

Harry pressed his forehead reverently to Sirius’s, breathing deeply, tears mingling with relief. He then turned, pressing a trembling, grateful kiss to Hermione’s forehead, warmth and gratitude enveloping them both. As if in response to their profound relief, a golden glow spread gently over Sirius. Hermione turned swiftly, noticing Severus, intense concentration etched across his features, performing a diagnostic charm. Sirius was alive—drained and fragile, but unequivocally alive.

Urgently, Severus handed Hermione the meticulously prepared bag. She quickly extracted the essential potions, her hands trembling slightly as she passed them to Harry. Harry carefully tilted Sirius's head, murmuring quiet reassurances, carefully pouring the potions into Sirius's mouth. Each swallow Sirius managed felt like a small, profound victory, every gulp bringing them incrementally closer to the impossible reunion they had fought so desperately for.

They were so wholly absorbed in the task of coaxing Sirius back into the realm of the living that the world around them seemed to dissolve into nothingness—time suspended in the sacred space they had carved between life and death. Every small motion—the tilt of Harry’s hand, the flicker of Sirius’s throat, the trembling of Hermione’s fingers—felt colossal, weighted with a sacred urgency. It was only when Hermione caught the faint rustle of polished leather and the nearly imperceptible thrum of magic shifting behind her that she became aware of the change in the atmosphere.

The pressure in the room had thickened, subtly at first, like fog gathering low and slow, until it pressed against her chest with enough force to steal her breath. She turned slightly, eyes narrowing, and saw them—figures emerging like phantoms in the half-light, all severe lines and watchful stillness. Kingsley stood among them, his expression unreadable, as though already mourning a decision he’d yet to make. Hermione’s stomach turned cold with dread just as Sirius’s lashes fluttered weakly, drawing in a breath that sounded too fragile, too real. The moment fractured. The stillness cracked.

She knew, then, that whatever came next would no longer be about the ritual or the miracle—it would be about keeping him.

“Well, Miss Granger,” Kingsley drawled, his voice laced with that careful blend of reluctant admiration and barely concealed calculation, “I must confess, you’ve surprised me. Again.” He stepped forward, the weight of his authority like a physical pressure in the air, his expression one of deliberate poise—as if he were already distancing himself from what he was about to say. “It seems I’ve once more underestimated the scope of your brilliance. The power of your conviction.”

He paused then, just long enough to let the moment stretch into something colder, heavier, and Hermione felt her heartbeat slow with dread. There was no warmth in his eyes, only obligation. Only control. “But as remarkable as this is,” he continued, tone smoothing into something almost pitying, “I’m afraid I cannot—will not—permit you to leave with him.”

The words dropped like stones into a silent lake, rippling outward, fracturing the hope that had begun to stitch itself across Hermione’s ribs. She felt Harry’s arm tense beside her, and Severus’s magical presence coiled like a wire, sharp and alert. And yet, all she could feel in that moment was the ache in her chest—deep and bitter, threaded with betrayal.

Because he hadn’t come here as a man to witness a miracle. He had come as the Ministry, as the machine. And the machine had already decided who was allowed to return from the dead.

Harry’s breath hitched audibly, his entire body jolting with the shock of Kingsley’s words. He instinctively tightened his hold on Sirius, whose weight had only just begun to register as living again. The disbelief that coloured Harry’s expression mirrored Hermione’s own, her heart plummeting into her stomach as her mind struggled to catch up.

Beside them, Severus moved with quiet precision, his wand drawn in one smooth motion, his dark gaze hardening into steel. The sudden shift from healer to protector transformed the air around him into something razor-sharp, brimming with tension.

Sirius, caught between disorientation and panic, turned his head with effort, eyes scanning the room as if trying to decode an unfamiliar language. His voice, hoarse and broken from disuse, cracked through the silence. “Harry?”

The name escaped him like a lifeline, a tether to something real. Recognition flickered in his gaze, the fog of confusion clearing moment by moment as his senses caught up to the present. The grief, the years, the absence—they hadn’t touched him yet. But Hermione saw the fear blooming beneath his exhaustion, as if his soul already knew this reunion was not going to be the sanctuary they’d hoped for.

“Welcome back, Mr. Black,” Kingsley murmured, though the words were flat and stripped of any real warmth. His voice, dry and deliberate, betrayed none of the awe or wonder the moment might have warranted. Instead, there was an edge—cool and analytical—as if he were dissecting the miracle in real time, already positioning it beneath the weight of bureaucracy and suspicion.

His eyes, narrowed with wary calculation, fixed on Sirius not as a man reborn, but as a variable to be measured and contained. “If you truly are Sirius Black,” he continued, his words dropping with a metallic finality that made Hermione’s skin prickle.

The moment twisted in her gut—Kingsley wasn’t bearing witness to something sacred. He was challenging it, pressing doubt like a blade into the fragile hope they had just managed to breathe life into. Hermione’s hand tensed where it rested against Severus, her heart thundering against her ribs in muted fury and disbelief.

This was not the welcome Sirius deserved. It was an interrogation dressed in courtesy, a cage already beginning to form.

Sirius shifted clumsily on the unforgiving stone floor, his limbs trembling as he tried to orient himself. His brows knotted, eyes darting wildly as though the scene before him made no sense at all, as if time itself had betrayed him. The words that left his lips were raw and breathless, laden with disbelief and a flicker of rising fury: “What the actual fuck?”

The vulgarity cracked the charged silence like a dropped plate. It wasn't elegant or refined—it was honest, unfiltered, utterly Sirius. And somehow, that brutal candour cut through the suffocating tension in the room. Harry let out a strangled burst of laughter that wavered on the edge of hysteria, the kind of sound born not from humour but from sheer emotional overload. Relief and despair wove themselves into that laugh, sharp and trembling.

Even Severus—ever the composed sentinel—allowed a dark, sardonic chuckle to escape, though it was devoid of mirth. His wand hand didn’t waver for a moment, eyes still locked onto the interlopers with the precision of a predator. The levity, such as it was, had no softness. It was a defiant noise, a crack in the brittle surface of a moment too vast and terrible to process all at once. And yet, that one irreverent sentence—sharp and disoriented—was the first real proof they had that Sirius Black had, impossibly, returned to them whole.

“Minister,” Hermione said, her voice steady but cold, each syllable shaped with unwavering conviction. Beneath the measured calm, her grip around Severus’s ankle tightened, not out of fear but a desperate need to remain tethered—to something known, something loyal. She wouldn’t let herself be moved by Kingsley’s posturing, not after what he had threatened to undo.

Her gaze cut toward Harry with quiet intensity, her silent question met with a brief nod. He had both arms coiled tightly around her and Sirius now, protective and unyielding. They had become an unbreakable unit—three survivors binding their fractured magic into something whole.

Without hesitation, Hermione reached for the golden medallion at her throat. The metal was warm against her skin, a hidden talisman forged in secrecy and desperation. She whispered the activation word—"Portus"—with a tone not of escape but of defiance. Magic surged around them, thick and immediate, a whirl of air and light laced with finality.

And in the space of a single, suspended breath, they vanished. The Death Room was left in eerie silence, emptied not just of bodies but of any certainty, the last flickers of displaced magic lingering in the air like smoke. Severus’s abandoned wheelchair stood solemnly at the chamber’s centre, a lonely relic and undeniable testament to the fact that Hermione Granger had never bowed to convention or authority. She did not rely on the system. She prepared for its collapse. Every contingency, every potential betrayal, she had seen them coming—and she had made sure they had a way out when the inevitable happened.

Their return to Grimmauld Place was anything but graceful. The Portkey expelled them in a tangled heap onto the drawing room floor, the ancient rug doing little to soften their fall. Hermione crashed into Severus, her body pressed tightly to his as his arms instinctively circled her waist, steadying them both. A muted groan escaped Harry, followed by a more pained one from Sirius. The moment held an absurd intimacy, the kind that only came from surviving something outrageous. Hermione found herself gazing into Severus’s dark eyes, watching the way his chest rose and fell in shallow gasps as if the air had been slammed from his lungs. Which, truthfully, it probably had.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured, attempting to disentangle herself, though her limbs felt boneless and slow. But Severus’s grip did not loosen. His hands, still firm on her waist, held her just a moment longer, grounding them both in the aftermath. There was a shift—an invisible pull—something unspoken in the air between them. For a breath, neither moved. Hermione, dazed and aching, found herself leaning forward slightly, as did Severus. Her heartbeat skittered. It felt like something momentous was about to occur—something fragile and irreversible.

But the silence shattered as Harry's voice sliced through it, high and panicked, calling her name with an urgency that turned her blood cold. The moment crumbled like ash between them.

“What is it, Mr. Potter?” Severus asked, his voice raspier than usual as he finally let her go. Hermione thought—no, she was almost sure—she saw something flicker in his eyes. Hurt, perhaps. Or maybe it was just exhaustion wearing a familiar face.

Harry’s reply came in a trembling sob. “It’s Sirius… he’s not waking up. He just collapsed—he’s out cold.”

Hermione crawled across the floor to them, her knees scraping against the rug, her movements slow and stiff. Every inch of her ached. Her mind was foggy with exhaustion and adrenalin’s ebb. As she reached Harry and Sirius, the sight of Sirius lying unnaturally still unraveled something inside her. Her throat tightened, and her eyes stung. The tears came before she could stop them, slipping down her cheeks in thin, trembling rivulets.

With a hand that shook despite her best efforts, she lifted her wand and cast a diagnostic charm over Sirius. She braced herself for the worst—but the runes glowed a pale green. Relief surged through her in a heady wave. He was alive. His magic was depleted almost entirely, yes, but structurally, magically, physically—he was whole.

“He’s alright, Harry,” she said, her voice hoarse from weeping. “His reserves are nearly empty. That’s why he’s unconscious. But his core is stabilising. He’ll drift in and out for the next few days while his magic rebuilds itself.”

She brushed the back of her fingers against Sirius’s cheek in a soothing, maternal motion. The contact was feather-light, but even in unconsciousness, the man leaned ever so slightly into her touch. It was enough to shatter what little composure she had left.

And in that dim room, among survivors and the recently resurrected, Hermione Granger wept—not from sorrow, but from sheer, overwhelming relief.

Grimmuald - Sirius - 2001

Sirius drifted between dream and consciousness, suspended in a liminal realm that neither embraced nor released him, a grey space echoing with half-formed memories and whispers like wind threading through an open crypt. There was no up or down, no breath or heartbeat—only the haunting sensation of being untethered, floating in a void that felt both ancient and personal. His mind clutched at broken fragments: Bellatrix’s manic grin split wide with glee, the searing punch of a curse hitting his chest, the impossible sensation of tumbling backwards not through space but through substance—something dense, heavy, and pulsing like magic made liquid.

The world had dissolved into something pale and terrible—milky and mute, like the bones of ghosts or the fog of forgotten places. It enveloped him entirely, erasing time, weight, even the concept of self. And then, just as completely, it ceased. He did not fall. He did not land. He simply... ceased to be.

He lingered in that strange non-place, severed from the rhythms of hunger and pain, yet somehow still tormented by the absence of both. His body no longer throbbed or ached, but his soul—it howled, raw and restless, like a storm caged in silence. The sensation was maddening, not of agony exactly, but of incompleteness, as though every part of him that once tethered him to the world had been dulled or drowned beneath a thick, unrelenting fog. He floated, not in peace, but in aching suspense.

The silence did not shatter—it yielded, shifting as though something had reached in and peeled apart the fog with deliberate tenderness. It wasn’t sound that broke through, but a presence, intimate and unwavering, slicing the grey murk like a remembered melody threading through a nightmare. A voice emerged—not spoken yet, but felt, vibrating through every remaining strand of Sirius’s being like an echo from a half-lived life. It hummed through the hollow of his chest and coiled around his spine, stirring marrow and memory alike. It breathed a name into the depths of him, one he had clung to even when everything else slipped away.

Harry.

But this wasn’t the high, cracking voice of a boy shouting spells in a battlefield. This voice had edges now—roughened by years, shaped by heartbreak, and soaked in the kind of love that can only exist after loss. It was deeper, quieter, laced with a pain that had been folded and refolded into something resilient. There was warmth there too, not soft but fierce, a steady blaze guiding him back through the darkness. It wasn't calling. It was offering. And Sirius, helpless against it, reached back—emotionally, spiritually—toward the certainty it promised.

The name remained unspoken, but Sirius knew it. Knew it by the ache it unravelled in his chest, by the way it coaxed something primal and desperate in him to stir. That voice wrapped around him like a woollen cloak thrown across frozen shoulders, scratching but grounding. A tether, frayed but intact. He followed it, unresisting, back through the storm.

It was not a whisper. Not a cry. It was simply there—weighty with affection, cracked with sorrow, undeniable. And in its wake came the awful, beautiful realisation: time had passed. The voice no longer carried the innocent sharpness of youth. It bore grief, wisdom, guilt—and love. So much love it staggered him.

Sirius strained to see, to find the boy-now-man who spoke to him, but his eyes remained heavy, blinking uselessly beneath the veil of exhaustion. His body felt impossibly light, unmoored from gravity, as if his soul and skin had been gently coaxed apart and never quite found their way back together. The effort of waking felt like dragging himself through sand, every muscle unresponsive and dull.

And still the voice remained, anchoring him in the ache of belonging, reminding him—no, insisting—that he was not yet lost.

Another voice followed—softer, but vibrant with grief and something else beneath it. Love, maybe. Hope sharpened to a blade’s edge. He could have sworn it belonged to Hermione Granger, but the voice was richer, slower. Aged with experience, with grief woven into every softened syllable like threads of silver in dark wool. There was a maturity wrapped around each syllable that his mind struggled to reconcile with the girl he once knew. And yet, it was unmistakably her, vibrant and fierce. The warmth that emanated from her was not gentle, but searing—a steady, defiant flame that refused to dim despite everything. It wasn’t just comfort; it was vitality, a fire forged from pain and resolve. It reached him in this shapeless place, reminding him of life beyond the grey. It touched him even here, in this grey in-between.

There were fingers on his cheek, tender and trembling. A kiss pressed to his skin with reverence. The scent of something herbal and bitter hovered in the air. A spoon nudged against his lips, and something warm and familiar settled into his mouth. The taste was unmistakable—thick, savoury, with notes of carrot and barley, salted just right. He swallowed it without question, desperate for anything real. His throat burned, but it reminded him he still had one.

“Please be okay. I need you to be okay.” Her voice splintered on the final word, the strain fracturing through the air like glass under pressure. It wasn’t a whisper or a sob, but something more desperate—an invocation, as if those syllables held the power to anchor him to life itself. Each word was soaked in fear and fierce devotion, and Sirius felt them land inside him, not as sound, but as sensation—heavy, aching, irrevocable. It pressed into his chest like the heel of a hand during resuscitation, a plea disguised as a command. He wanted to respond, to murmur her name like a tether, to summon up the old smirk, say something glib to lighten the gravity of the moment, or simply to reassure her that he was still there. But his body betrayed him—his lips refused movement, his throat remained closed, and his voice was lost somewhere in the storm of magic and memory. All he could do was feel, and gods, he felt everything.

Then Harry again, stronger this time, his voice carrying the weight of both hope and fear like a tightrope stretched between them. “Mia says you’re doing alright, old man. Just your magic. That’s all. It’s scaring us, but she says you’re coming back.” The words didn’t just echo—they pressed into Sirius like hands trying to guide him back through the dark. And that name—Mia—twisted inside his chest with unfamiliar familiarity. Mia. Hermione. No longer the bushy-haired girl he once watched argue with every adult in the Order, but someone older, steadier, transfigured by time and trials. Different and the same. And Harry—Merlin, Harry—he wasn’t the wide-eyed boy anymore, wasn’t the child who had looked up at him with such pure trust. His voice now carried command, sorrow, and love in equal measure. Sirius’s chest tightened as he realised how much he had missed, how long he had been gone. Time hadn’t just passed—it had reshaped them all.

Time had passed. He wasn’t ready for how much. It settled in his chest like a foreign weight, a truth both obvious and overwhelming, as though the years he had lost had returned all at once, pressing into his ribs and his heart until he could barely breathe. He could feel time in their voices, see it in their eyes even through the haze, and it terrified him—not because he feared change, but because he hadn’t been there to witness it. Time had shaped them without him.

Then came the third voice—sarcastic and sharp-edged, steeped in weariness and familiar disdain, yet carrying an undercurrent of something else, something grounded. It sliced cleanly through the dense web of emotion spun by the other two, not as warmth but as something solid, anchoring. His was a voice like cold steel pressed against burning skin, abrupt but undeniably real.

Snape’s name landed in Sirius’s consciousness not with comfort, but with the unmistakable weight of reality—a jagged reminder that whatever this was, it wasn’t a dream. Of all people to be here in this fractured, liminal moment, it was Severus Snape. The voice had not lost its bite—it still carried its signature acid, honed over decades of resentment—but there was a weight behind it now that hadn’t been there before. A fatigue, perhaps, or some deeper resolve. As if war and time had eroded the man’s sharpest edges, leaving something more brittle, but no less cutting. It was like seeing snow fall in summer, incongruous and startling, a paradox that somehow made more sense than it should have.

It didn’t comfort Sirius. That wasn’t the point. Snape’s voice was not balm but ballast, anchoring him with its brutal clarity. It pulled at him, not gently but effectively, like a hook dug deep into his ribs. Sirius’s mind twitched toward it, unsettled and curious. He fought the fog to listen harder, needing to know whether this was real or simply a hallucination his mind had conjured to make sense of the impossible.

There was something unshakably constant in Snape’s presence that gnawed at him. It wasn’t trust—Merlin, no—but it was a kind of certainty. A known quantity in a world that had slipped from his fingers. The drawl, the disdain, the dry edge—it was all still there, but now it bore the marks of exhaustion, of long days spent surviving rather than battling. Sirius couldn’t decide if that made it more or less believable. Had time softened Snape or simply revealed what had always been hidden beneath the sneer?

His eyes refused to open, weighed down by exhaustion or magic or both, but he reached for the voice nonetheless. Emotion curled low in his chest—confusion, disbelief, a strange, hollow ache. If Snape was truly here, if he had come to this room of all places, of his own will, then Sirius had to matter. That thought struck like lightning across a dark sea—unnerving, implausible, but potent.

It should have been laughable, a product of fevered delusion, the kind of thing conjured in the grip of dying thought. A hallucination, yes—but it stayed, persistent, unwavering, with a clarity too sharp for a dream. Yet it lingered, the voice threading through the murk with an uncomfortable sincerity. Not tenderness—never that—but something jaggedly honest, unsoftened by pity. Snape’s words weren’t meant to soothe. They were meant to command, to compel, to provoke life back into reluctant lungs. And in that, they were strangely effective.

Sirius wasn’t sure what stung more: the fact that Snape was here at all, or that his voice might be the very thing keeping Sirius tethered to the waking world.

"I never liked you, Mut," Snape muttered, his voice worn and edged with old disdain, but dulled by something heavier beneath it—exhaustion, perhaps, or reluctant concern. "But I need you to stay alive. For her sake." The words did not carry affection, nor did they try to mask themselves in civility. They dropped like stones into the silence, deliberate and weighted, more command than request. And though they came wrapped in Snape’s usual dryness, there was a frayed sincerity that lingered behind them, like a door left barely ajar.

Sirius yearned to react, to hurl a wry insult or bark a sardonic laugh, to claw his way through the numbness with something—anything—that resembled his former self. But his limbs remained stubbornly unresponsive, as though forged from lead and buried beneath layers of invisible weight. The confusion didn’t strike all at once; it swelled slowly, a rising tide that lapped insidiously at the edges of his mind, soaking through reason and leaving only disorientation in its wake. The sensation was not panic exactly, but an aching helplessness that made him want to scream, to fight, to escape his own useless flesh. Yet all he could do was endure the quiet and let the questions gnaw at him—unanswered and relentless.

For her. The phrase clung to him, echoing with a gravity that felt too purposeful, too intimate to dismiss. Who was she? Mia? Hermione? The names collided in his mind, indistinct yet monumental, their meanings altered by time and distance. Snape had spoken the words not with the cold detachment Sirius expected, but with a resonance that bordered on reverence. It hadn’t been a throwaway line—it had been a vow. And Sirius felt it like a stone dropped into the deepest part of him. It landed heavy, unsettling the sediment of his emotions, stirring grief and guilt and something sharper beneath. His chest constricted with the unspoken weight of it, as if the mere suggestion that he was needed, that someone’s survival was tied to his own, dared him to believe he had worth left to give. That he wasn’t just a relic resurrected out of time, but a man who still had a place, a purpose, and a name that mattered to someone.

There was no Moony. That hollow absence carved deeper than any scar, more piercing than the searing agony of bone-mending or soul-stitching magic. Where was Remus? His absence rang louder than all the voices combined, echoing in the cavern of Sirius’s chest with a sharpness that had nothing to do with physical pain. Had he…? The question lurked in the corners of Sirius’s mind, unfinished but no less corrosive for its incompletion.

He couldn't bear to finish it, not yet. The thought sat there, a jagged stone lodged in his throat, too dangerous to swallow but too painful to spit out. Instead, he buried it deep within the haze, refusing to name the possibility aloud. It was safer to let it drift unfinished into the grey, to fold it back into the murky silence where hope could still survive unchallenged.

So he stayed where he was—in the folds of sleep, half aware and half drifting, savouring the touches, the voices, the soup, and even the bitter potions they coaxed down his throat. He felt warm fingers threading through his hair. He felt the magic in him start to stir, faintly, like embers buried deep beneath ash.

His name was spoken over and over—gently, fiercely, as a prayer and a plea. Sirius held onto it like a lifeline. He let their voices fill him, slowly stitching him back together. They were waiting. He wasn’t alone.

He wasn’t whole yet, not by any means. But for the first time since that strange unraveling—whatever it was that had stolen time and breath and memory from him—he believed he might be again.

And when he opened his eyes—truly opened them, no longer through the haze of half-sleep or the muddled veil of fractured memory—he would remember this moment not as a blur of magic and murmured voices, but as the quiet, steady reawakening of something once lost. Grief had reached out with skeletal fingers and yanked him back into the world, raw and gasping, but it was love—unyielding and luminous—that had held him in place. It was their voices, soft and frayed, their touches, trembling yet constant, that grounded him in the now. It wasn’t born of obligation, nor carved from legacy or duty—it was something deeper, rawer, stitched from threads of memory, pain, and hope that had endured even the harshest silences. Love, terrifying in its intensity and miraculous in its endurance, wrapped around his bones and whispered that survival was not only possible, but worth it. That was the truth he would carry with him, the one certainty in a world remade by time: grief had called him home, yes, but love was the reason he stayed.

He awoke to the low murmur of music drifting like smoke through the room, a familiar melody playing from somewhere beyond the haze of illness and fractured dreams. He didn’t know how long he had been unconscious—days, maybe weeks. His throat was parched, each breath catching like thorns on torn cloth, and when he tried to swallow, the sensation scraped like sandpaper. Shifting his head just a fraction sent waves of nausea rippling through him, the sweat-damp pillow beneath his cheek clammy with the remnants of fever. His body ached with the heaviness of magic reknitting bone and soul, and he felt hollowed out by its labour.

There, curled in a chair pulled close to the bed, sat a figure wrapped in quiet exhaustion. He squinted through the lingering fog clouding his vision, blinking away tears he hadn’t realised had welled. The woman—he could tell by the spill of unruly curls framing her face—was slumped sideways, lost to sleep. Her body trembled with whatever nightmare gripped her, shoulders twitching with each ragged exhale. His gaze travelled lower, catching on the worn leather jacket she had pulled tightly around her shoulders, and for a fleeting second, he thought he was dreaming again. It was his. His old jacket. But it had been altered, tailored to fit her smaller frame, and something about the sight punched the air from his lungs.

He tried to speak, to reach for her, to ground himself in the reality of her presence, but his voice collapsed into silence and the sour taste of bile rose in his throat. So instead, he watched. He watched the lines of her face twitch with unease, the way her hands curled into fists around the fabric of the jacket. She wasn’t just tired—she was hurting, haunted by the same ghosts that had never really left him. He wanted to touch her, to reassure her, to bridge the impossible gulf between his re-entry into the world and her presence beside him.

She stirred with a soft huff, a breath that sounded more like surrender than sleep. One delicate hand lifted to push her curls away from her face, and as she moved, her eyes opened—those unmistakable, honey-brown eyes—and met his with a jolt that stole the remaining air from the room.

“Sirius?” Her voice broke like a prayer, the whisper of someone who had doubted she would ever speak that name again. He blinked, trying to match the woman before him with the girl he remembered. She had grown into something fierce and luminous in his absence. She wore his jacket, yes, but it was the weight in her gaze—the ache, the joy, the disbelief—that made it truly his again.

And just like that, reality anchored.

Grimmuald - Hermione - 2001

Hermione stared into those storm-grey eyes as the tears welled in her own, thick and unbidden. For a moment, the world narrowed to the space between them, heavy with disbelief and fragile wonder, like the hush of breath before the scream in the aftermath of catastrophe. Then, without warning, she surged forward, launching herself from the armchair and onto Sirius’s prone form. A startled grunt escaped him as she straddled his waist, clutching at him with a desperation that bordered on feral. Her arms wound tightly around his neck, and she pressed her face into the curve where his shoulder met his throat, as if by sheer proximity she could tether him here, to this moment, to life itself, anchoring him through touch alone.

Her entire frame quaked with the intensity of her sobs, every muscle tensing as she clung to him, her breath catching raggedly in her throat and breaking in uneven gasps. As tears streamed freely down her cheeks, soaking into his fevered skin, the sensation was overwhelming—part catharsis, part desperation. It was as though every repressed emotion, every buried fear and silent plea, surged to the surface in that single, soul-shattering moment of release. The emotion spilling out of her felt volcanic—molten and raw, tearing through the hollow places she'd tried so hard to keep intact. At first, he didn’t move. He lay beneath her like a man stunned, uncomprehending, limbs heavy and uncertain, still caught somewhere between memory and nightmare. But then, with a hesitant strength that grew steadier by the second, his arms rose and wrapped around her, drawing her into a crushing embrace that made something inside her finally give way. He was solid. He was breathing. And he was here.

"We were so worried about you," she whispered into his skin, the words muffled by flesh and trembling with the weight of too many sleepless nights, too many mornings where she'd woken up with hope in her throat and despair in her bones. The warmth of his cheek rested against the crown of her head, his breathing shallow but rhythmic, a fragile metronome grounding her to the present. He hesitated, then offered a hoarse, uncertain, "I’m sorry?"—a question more than a statement, laced with confusion and guilt and the kind of innocence that only comes from forgetting you’ve died. The absurdity of it hit her like a punch, and she choked out a laugh through her tears, an aching, broken sound that seemed to echo with months of fear and fractured hope tangled together.

She didn’t lift her head. Her neck refused to obey her, as if the very act of parting from his warmth might shatter the fragile reality she’d finally reclaimed. The heat radiating off his body was almost too much—likely still the remnants of a fever that had gripped him for weeks now—but it grounded her. After Sirius had collapsed on the drawing room floor of Grimmauld Place, limp as a marionette with its strings cut, Hermione had thought—naively, stupidly—that he’d wake in a day or two, once his magic found its balance again. But days bled into weeks, and he only got worse. He drifted between lucidity and fevered confusion, his skin burning, his voice incoherent. There were times she feared they had pulled him from the Veil only to watch him fade in front of them, slower this time, more cruel, more intimate in its unraveling.

Harry had gone home one day, silent and pale, and returned hours later with a duffle bag and red-rimmed eyes. He moved into the room next to Sirius’s without a word. When Hermione finally asked, he told her he had ended things with Ginny. Apparently, Ginny had demanded a choice—her or Hermione—and Harry, steadfast as ever, had chosen Hermione. The guilt that followed broke Hermione in places she didn’t even know she could fracture. She vomited for three days straight, unable to face herself in the mirror, let alone the boy she had burdened with so much. That he would dismantle pieces of his life just to keep her stitched together was unbearable in its kindness.

Ginny’s betrayal struck Hermione not as a sudden blow, but as a slow, creeping ache that settled deep within her chest—a pain made worse by how little it surprised her. There had once been a time, not so long ago, when she had clung to the hope that they might repair what had frayed between them, that shared memories and years of closeness could be stitched back together into something resembling friendship. But now, looking back, she realised those hopes had been stitched from naivety. Ginny's silence in Australia hadn’t just been absence—it had been a choice, a declaration that Hermione's suffering did not warrant her time or her presence. That understanding curdled something inside her, a mix of grief and reluctant acceptance, not of the loss of Ginny’s friendship, but of the illusion that it had ever been truly reciprocal. The realisation hollowed her in quiet, irreversible ways. When Hermione had disappeared to Australia two years ago, she’d expected distance, but not silence. The only letters that arrived with any regularity came from Harry, George, Luna, and—shockingly—Lavender. The rest of the Weasleys had reached out sporadically, but meaningfully. Bill and Fleur had visited her twice during their holidays, warm and understanding. Charlie had come once while attending a dragon conference in Sydney, all quiet strength and reassuring hugs. Even Percy had written, rambling about ludicrous Ministry legislation that made her laugh despite everything.

They had all found their own ways to keep her tethered, even from afar. Except for Ginny. Ginny had written twice and then stopped. Harry made excuses—something about Quidditch schedules and international matches—but Hermione had stopped believing them long ago. Ginny had been in Australia several times and never once sought her out. And yet, Hermione still felt as though she was the one who had done something unforgivable, as though her pain had been an inconvenience too loud to endure.

When Sirius's condition deteriorated somewhere between Valentine’s Day and early March, Hermione finally reached out. She wrote to Luna, who was now an Herbologist and a certified Potions Master, and Lavender, who had become a Healer specialising in magical depletion and trauma-related werewolf care. Neither woman reacted with anger or accusations when Hermione told them she had been back in Britain for seven months. Instead, they embraced her, no questions asked, and set to work as if no time had passed at all. They didn’t demand explanations. They didn’t require apologies. They simply came.

Lavender conducted a comprehensive diagnostic on Sirius, her wand movements deft and her expression focused, her quiet confidence filling the space like a balm. Then, with her signature mix of gentle persistence and disarming charm, she turned her attention to Severus. It wasn’t just the fact that she was relentless—though she was—but rather that she spoke to him without flinching, without fear, treating him not as a figure of intimidation but as a man who deserved care. Her unwavering tone, her refusal to be cowed by his sarcasm, and the clear mastery she exhibited in her field slowly wore him down. By the time even his eyebrows twitched in reluctant acquiescence, Severus had already begun to see her not just as a Healer, but as someone he could trust. She had peeled away the layers of his guardedness with the precision of a scalpel and the grace of someone who saw the man beneath the myth, and in doing so, convinced him to allow her the same scrutiny she had given Sirius. That was when they discovered a sliver of Nagini’s fang still lodged in the nerve cluster of his spine, missed by the Healers at St Mungo’s. Severus had stared at the results in silence, then looked at Lavender like she had peeled back time and rewritten his sentence. He had agreed, with minimal sarcasm, to let her take over his care. The extraction was scheduled for the summer. Lavender wanted to consult several specialists before attempting anything that delicate. It was a hope Hermione hadn’t dared speak aloud—but it was there, blooming at the edges.

Luna and Lavender had worked alongside Hermione and Severus, brewing stabilising potions and performing soft binding spells to help Sirius’s core recalibrate. There had been moments—rare and fleeting—when it felt like they were healing something deeper than just Sirius’s body. Like the four of them were stitching together the frayed seams of something greater, something that had been unravelled for far too long, not only in magic but in faith, in family, in belief that the broken could be made whole again.

And now, as April crept in with its hesitant sunlight and budding trees, Sirius had opened his eyes, sharp and steady, their clarity slicing through the haze like moonlight refracted through a shattered windowpane. They held none of the confusion she feared, nor the emptiness she had braced herself to find. Instead, they were saturated with something deeper—recognition, perhaps, or memory not yet shaped into words, a tether binding the past and present together through his gaze alone. His eyes, once wild and untamed, now glimmered with a lucidity that felt almost fragile in its intensity, like the first breath after nearly drowning, like the hesitant bloom of hope after too many frostbitten winters. And still she stared, unable to look away, terrified that if she blinked, he might disappear again.

Hermione had simply broken. She clung to him, her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt, clutching with a need so visceral it stole the breath from her lungs. She pressed herself closer, trying to convince her own trembling body that he was real, that the warmth bleeding through the cloth was not just a phantom sensation. Every nerve in her arms felt taut, stretched between grief and relief, as if letting go would unravel her completely. She could feel the flutter of his heart beneath her cheek, and it struck her with an almost unbearable tenderness—the reminder that he was alive, still hers in this liminal space between pain and hope. Her body ached from weeks of tension, of holding herself too tightly, and now, as she allowed herself to melt into him, there was a kind of unraveling in her bones—a surrender not of defeat, but of the heavy burden she had carried too long on her own. She wept not just for the fear and the loss, but for the staggering grace of having him back, and being held as if she, too, was worth holding onto. her tears soaking his skin as his hand traced slow, shaky circles along her spine. There was no rush in his movements, only intention—each motion whispering: I’m here. I stayed. I remember.

Sirius’s voice broke through her sobs, low and raw but steady, as he rubbed slow circles into the middle of her back. “It’s okay. I’m okay. I’ve got you, little love.” The tenderness of the words undid something in her chest, something brittle that cracked and gave way under the weight of relief. She pressed her face deeper into his shoulder, breath hitching as the tears came harder. Her fingers curled against his chest, gripping his shirt like an anchor. And he held her, not just with arms, but with the certainty of someone who understood what it meant to survive.

The door creaked open, and it wasn’t the sound alone that stilled her, but the subtle squeak of wheels on old wooden floorboards. The sharp intake of breath from the man beneath her confirmed what her heart already knew—Severus. Hermione froze, her breath catching mid-sob as she tried to judge the air between them. It thickened with old grudges and newer truces, a tension woven into every stolen glance and half-swallowed insult exchanged in the past.

She didn’t dare shift, as though the very act of motion might shatter the delicate thread binding the moment together. Her hands still trembled where they rested against Sirius’s chest, the steady beat of his heart thudding beneath her palms like a drum calling her back to something real. With effort that felt both monumental and necessary, she drew in a shaky breath and tilted her gaze upward, cautiously, almost reverently. Her eyes climbed the line of his jaw, past the bruises and the stubble, until they met his own, stormy and wide with disbelief. There, in that flicker of recognition, in the twitch of his brow and the subtle widening of his pupils, was confirmation of something she had barely dared to hope for—that he saw her. That he was here, truly here, and not just some echo brought back by magic and grief. Wide-eyed, blinking with slow disbelief, Sirius stared at Severus as though he were a ghost returned, not from the Veil, but from a lifetime of contention. And then, utterly and completely Sirius, he threw his head back and laughed. It burst from him like a storm breaking—loud, unfiltered, and strangely full of light. The bark of it echoed through the room, rich with something almost like joy.

“Merlin help me,” he rasped, voice gravelled and unused, “you old bastard—you’re real. I thought I’d dreamt hearing your voice.”

Hermione gasped softly, the sound catching in her throat as Sirius’s arms pulled her tighter against him, an instinctive motion that communicated more than words ever could. She turned her head toward Severus, her breath still uneven. The man in the wheelchair sat motionless, his expression unreadable save for the subtle twist of his lips into something resembling a smirk—one that lacked venom and brimstone for once.

In that small moment, as the storm of past enmity met the cautious stillness of fragile peace, Hermione felt something settle within her. It wasn’t resolution, not yet, but it was a beginning. Perhaps, just perhaps, this strange constellation of broken people and bruised hearts could find a way forward together. And for the first time in years, Hermione allowed herself to believe—not in perfection, but in possibility. That maybe, just maybe, what they had sacrificed and survived had not been for nothing.

Chapter Text

Grimmuald - 2001 - Sirius

Sirius woke with a weight pressed to his chest and a mouth full of hair. It was the sort of moment that might have once startled him into laughter or complaint, but his limbs were slow to respond, and his thoughts even slower. His skin felt too tight, every nerve raw like it had been scrubbed clean with sand. His eyes blinked against the dim light filtering through the heavy curtains, and his body registered heat—an unbearable, suffocating sort of heat, like he’d been caught between fever and fire, half-boiled in his own skin.

The hair in his mouth turned out to be Hermione’s. It was everywhere—frizzed and tangled, curling damp against his throat and jaw, smelling of iron and candle smoke and something sweeter underneath. She was lying across him, her face tucked into the curve of his shoulder, arms wrapped possessively around his chest like she might physically hold him in place if he dared to vanish again. Her breathing was slow but shallow, like someone who hadn’t let go of sleep properly, even while her body kept clinging to the one it had fought to return.

The memories hit like a hex. The Veil. That endless pulling. Her voice—familiar and impossible, dragging him through the dark like it had claws. The pain. That awful moment when he’d felt his own body start to re-form, sinew knitting over bone, heart forcing itself to beat. It was too much. It was everything. It was being born again without mercy or anaesthetic.

And then—her. Her face above his, wet with tears. Her hands, scraped raw and bloodied. Her voice, ragged from screaming his name like it was an incantation older than language. She had looked like ruin, and he had never seen anything more terrifying or beautiful.

She must have passed out on him at some point. He’d woken—properly, not the half-conscious spasming he vaguely remembered—sometime in the dark. She had been curled against him, sobbing in broken spurts, saying things he couldn’t understand. She’d said his name a thousand different ways. None of them sounded angry. He hadn’t spoken. He couldn’t. But he had moved. Just enough to wrap both arms around her and hold on. Like an anchor. Like a fucking lifeline.

She had cried herself empty. And now they were here—limbs tangled, skin clammy, and no fucking clue what day it was. He was sore everywhere. His head felt like it was packed with fog. But he was here. Breathing.

He pressed his lips to the top of her head and whispered, “Thank you so, so much, little love,” not sure whether she could hear him and not really caring. Saying it felt necessary. Like carving himself a place in the moment.

A rustle. The creak of a wheel. He looked up and found himself pinned under the gaze of someone he hadn’t seen in over a decade and hadn’t particularly missed. Severus Snape, pale as parchment, sat in a wheelchair near the fireplace, arms crossed over his chest like some judgmental portrait come to life.

Sirius let out a dry, rasping breath that scratched at his throat like dust. The words came low, just above a whisper, more exhale than statement, as if he wasn’t entirely convinced his voice would carry. “So. You’re not a hallucination,” he murmured, eyes narrowing against the flicker of candlelight and the disbelief still coiled in his chest.

He had half-expected the world around him to dissolve into smoke the moment he blinked. The surreal stillness of Grimmauld’s master bedroom, the weight of Hermione’s body pressed against his, and now Severus Snape of all people, perched upright and watching him like a sentient gargoyle from a wheeled throne—none of it felt real. And yet there the man was, arms crossed, jaw slightly tilted in judgment, the black of his eyes gleaming like obsidian under the low light.

The sound of the wheelchair creaked as Snape shifted his weight. Sirius’s gaze locked on it again, unsettled by how much had clearly changed while he was caught on the wrong side of existence. He couldn’t stop the thought, jagged and sudden— What the fuck did I miss?

“Glad to see you’re holding alive, Mut,” Snape said, wheeling forward. His voice had changed—less bite, more gravel. As if it too had been dragged back from something terrible. The sound of his wheels over the old floorboards echoed in Sirius’s chest.

His gaze dropped to the polished metal frame and the worn leather wheels, and for a moment, all thought stalled. The wheelchair was not a figment of stress or hallucination. It was real, and it was a fact that twisted in his chest with startling clarity. He blinked, as if that alone could chase away the impossible, but the chair remained, and Snape remained in it—stoic, immovable, as if daring him to ask the obvious.

Somewhere in the scrambled haze of memory, he recalled Hermione telling him it was 2001. That he’d been gone—not unconscious, not imprisoned, but truly dead—for over five years. The realisation hit with the blunt force of cold iron. It wasn’t just the date that mattered—it was what that time meant, the lives that had gone on, the battles fought without him, the people aged and changed. He had missed years. Missed the way war had settled into scars. Missed the damage.

His throat closed up, and the quiet curse that escaped him felt too small to hold the truth of it. Everything had changed. Everything, while he had been nothing but bones and memory beyond a curtain no one was meant to cross.

Snape leaned in and brushed some of Hermione’s hair off her face. His touch was oddly careful. Not tender, not possessive. Just... respectful. Sirius watched the movement, surprised to find himself more curious than outraged. Her mouth twitched as if in protest, her brow furrowed into the ghost of a pout. She clung tighter to Sirius’s chest.

She looked wrong. Not just tired—depleted. Her skin was pale, her eyes bruised with shadow even in sleep. Whatever she had done to bring him back had carved into her. She didn’t just look exhausted. She looked worn.

Snape cleared his throat with a dry rasp, the kind that echoed off the stone walls and carried with it a warning, or perhaps a request for attention. It was subtle, but not accidental. The kind of sound that belonged to someone accustomed to commanding a room without needing to raise his voice. Sirius, caught in the weight of his thoughts and the feel of Hermione’s breathing against his chest, forced himself to look up.

His gaze climbed slowly, dragging from the pale hand that had just brushed Hermione’s hair aside, to the robes pooled over bony knees, and finally to the face he hadn’t seen in half a decade of death. Snape’s expression hadn’t softened, not really, but there was something different about it now. Less scorn. Less venom. Perhaps just weariness disguised as civility. His mouth was set in a line, his eyes still dark and unreadable, but Sirius sensed that even the barbs that once lined every word were dulled now, or buried beneath exhaustion too deep to bother with old grudges.

“Here. You need to drink this,” Snape said, his voice steady but not unkind as he extended a hand holding a slim, bone-coloured vial. The glass shimmered faintly in the muted light, the liquid inside catching the flicker of the candle with an opalescent sheen that hinted at the alchemy woven into it. The contents looked thick, a shade somewhere between ochre and decay, and it swirled slowly as if reluctant to be swallowed.

Sirius eyed it warily, the shape of it unfamiliar but the gesture oddly... human. The Severus Snape he remembered would have flung it at him or levitated it into his lap without a word. But this version—paler, thinner, perhaps tempered by something heavier than hatred—waited with quiet expectation. No dramatic flourish, no mocking sneer. Just a simple offering, and perhaps the ghost of exhaustion behind his black eyes.

The vial was surprisingly cool against Sirius’s fingertips, as though it had been resting in a draught rather than cradled in Snape’s hand. The glass was smooth, unnervingly delicate, and he turned it slightly to watch the strange liquid inside shift. The potion moved sluggishly, like sap, its colours impossible to name—somewhere between rot and rust, with an oily sheen that clung to the inner curve of the glass like it was alive. He could smell it even before he unstoppered it: bitter, acrid, something sour at the edges, like crushed beetles and burnt herbs.

Sirius lifted an eyebrow with exaggerated slowness, a dry huff escaping him that didn’t quite reach the corners of his mouth. His voice, when it came, was sandpapered with disuse but laced with familiar sardonic edge. “What are we doing now? Post-mortem poisoning?” he asked, his tone half-jesting but underscored by genuine suspicion. The question was less a jab and more a threadbare attempt at normalcy—a return to the irreverent banter that used to define him, though it now sounded oddly hollow in the thick quiet of the room. He wasn’t sure whether he was trying to amuse himself, disarm Snape, or simply fill the space where panic might otherwise creep in.

“If I’d wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have helped her drag your sorry arse out of the Veil,” Snape said, his voice low but resonant, each word delivered with the deliberate cadence of someone who had weighed them carefully. His mouth twitched at the corner, not quite a smirk, more the involuntary tic of someone unused to humour that didn’t sting. There was a weary sharpness in his tone, not bitter exactly, but bone-deep, like a man who had done something monstrous out of necessity and now had to live with the fact that it had saved a life. “You’re not worth the effort,” he added, but the venom had thinned to something drier, more brittle—something almost resembling honesty rather than cruelty.

Sirius took the vial closer to his nose, giving it a cautious sniff as the scent curled up into his sinuses like a physical warning. The smell alone was vile—sharp and fermented, the kind of stench that lingered at the back of your throat long after you’d walked away from it. His face twisted instinctively, a grimace pulling at the corner of his mouth as the full sensory insult of the potion settled over him. It wasn’t just disgusting. It was ominous.

He narrowed his eyes and looked over the rim of the glass at Snape, suspicion flickering behind his expression. “You’re sure this isn’t revenge?” he asked, his voice dry, the sarcasm a little more muted than usual—not because he meant it less, but because he was too bloody tired to coat it properly in venom. The question hovered between them like smoke, half-joking but with a spine of genuine concern, as if some part of him couldn’t fully rule out the possibility that his former school rival was still capable of finishing what the Veil had started.

“Quite,” Snape replied, the word shaped with the same dry edge he used to cut through a classroom’s noise. But the faintest waver passed through his tone, almost imperceptible, like the voice of someone too tired for cruelty. His fingers flexed slightly on the armrest, a motion that seemed almost reflexive, as if the thought of Hermione catching him in such a betrayal was something that sparked genuine unease. “She’d murder me if I undid all her work by poisoning you now,” he added, and though the phrasing carried the ghost of sarcasm, it lacked bite. Instead, there was a strange, begrudging reverence behind it. Not just fear of reprisal, but an acknowledgment of how much she’d done, and how sacred that effort had become. It wasn’t just about not crossing Hermione—it was about not dishonouring what she had torn herself apart to achieve.

He tipped the vial to his lips and downed it in a single grim swallow, bracing himself against the inevitable revolt of his senses. The taste was immediate and appalling—a sulphurous rot that coated his tongue like curdled yolk mixed with something far older and more sinister. It settled thickly in the back of his throat, the texture closer to sludge than liquid, and his stomach gave an indignant lurch. He gagged hard, bending slightly with the motion, his face contorting in disgust. He sucked in air through his nose, trying not to retch, blinking against the sudden sting in his eyes.

He coughed once, twice, then glanced sharply at Snape with an expression caught between incredulity and genuine betrayal. “You’re absolutely certain this isn’t poison?” he rasped, and though the edge in his voice was meant to be sardonic, it trembled beneath the weight of the potion still burning in his gut.

Snape extended a slender glass of water toward him, his hand steady despite the fatigue lingering in his face. The water caught the low light in the room, sending a faint shimmer across the surface, deceptively serene. Sirius took it with a grunt, the coolness of the glass biting into his palm like it had been pulled from deep stone cellars. “Pretty sure,” Snape said, his tone dry as kindling, but carrying none of the venom it might once have held. “She would have hexed me into next year.”

There was no doubt who ‘she’ was. The very idea of Hermione’s wrath had carved something like respect into Snape’s voice, and it lingered there now—half begrudging, half reverent. It was strange to hear him speak that way, like a soldier describing a general who’d stormed through fire and dragged him back out with her own scorched hands.

Sirius accepted the glass with a grunt of thanks and brought it to his lips, sipping cautiously. The cool water helped wash away the dregs of the foul potion, but it couldn’t quite soothe the raw scrape left in its wake. He exhaled slowly through his nose, as if the gesture alone might purge the taste and the questions crowding behind his teeth. His eyes narrowed, not just from suspicion but with something closer to amusement—or perhaps disbelief.

“You keep saying ‘she.’” His voice was rough, but the edge of curiosity was unmistakable now, slipping past his fatigue like a blade through damp parchment. “You do realise that sounds like you’ve been trained by her?”

The words weren’t meant to be cruel. Not really. But there was something edged in them—something both baffled and begrudging. Like the idea of Severus Snape taking orders, let alone from Hermione Granger, was so absurd it needed to be said aloud just to be believed.

Snape didn’t bother replying, didn’t even shift his posture in response to the jab. Instead, he simply leaned back into the worn curve of his chair, the flickering light from the hearth casting faint shadows across his face. His gaze remained fixed on Sirius, unblinking and unreadable, like he was taking the full measure of a man half-formed from memory and myth. There was no scowl, no scoff, no retaliatory insult—just a long, appraising silence that felt more unsettling than any snide remark could have been. It was the look of someone staring at a riddle that refused to solve itself, and who wasn’t yet convinced it was worth the effort. Whatever he was thinking, Snape kept it locked behind the black glint of his eyes, and Sirius felt the weight of that scrutiny like pressure against his ribs.

Sirius let the silence stretch, heavy and thick with the weight of too many ghosts. He studied Snape for a long moment, squinting slightly as if trying to reconcile this hollow-eyed, gaunt figure with the cruel shadow that had once haunted the dungeons of Hogwarts. The resemblance was there in the set of the mouth and the arch of the brow, but the rest had been scraped raw by time, suffering, or something else Sirius couldn’t yet name.

He cleared his throat, more out of habit than necessity, and let the familiar cadence slip into his voice, though it lacked its usual venom. “Alright. Who the fuck are you, and what have you done with the Bat of the Dungeons?”

“Nearly bled out in a shack,” he said, his voice gravelled and frayed at the edges, more bone than bite. “Woke up pissing into a bottle.” The corner of his mouth didn’t move, but something in his eyes flickered—something that looked suspiciously like memory, cold and relentless. “Changes your perspective.”

There was no embellishment, no theatrics. Just the blunt delivery of truth. It hit harder than any insult could have, and it left no room for jokes. It was the kind of statement a man only made when he’d long since given up trying to explain himself to the world. And Sirius, for once, had no clever retort to offer. Just silence—and the slow, steady sinking of understanding in his gut.

His voice was hoarse, thin around the edges, but honest in a way that cut deeper than any insult. It wasn’t self-pity. Just the blunt truth of someone who had survived something brutal and never quite made it back whole. And for once, Sirius didn’t have a single thing to say.

That shut Sirius up for a moment. He didn’t laugh. Snape didn’t smile. They just looked at each other—two survivors of wars that should have killed them both.

“She saved you too?” Sirius asked, the words barely more than a breath, as if speaking them aloud might make them real in a way his fractured memory could not yet process. He didn’t look at Snape when he said it. His gaze had shifted downward, fixed on the mess of curls pressed against his chest and the steady rise and fall of the woman who had rewritten the laws of magic just to reach for him.

Snape gave a single nod, the motion sharp but weighted with something that felt like resignation. “That one doesn’t let go of people,” he said after a pause, the words stripped of irony or defence. “Not even when she should.”

There was no derision in his voice, no condescension. If anything, there was a thread of tired awe woven through it—like someone who had tried, and failed, to outlast her faith. His eyes, dark as ever, briefly flicked to Hermione’s form curled against Sirius’s side, and for a heartbeat, something softer passed over his face. Then it was gone, replaced by the impassive set of someone who had long since stopped expecting the world to make sense.

Hermione stirred in the slow, unconscious way that people do when sleep is no longer deep but the body refuses to fully wake. A soft sound escaped her throat—barely a hum—as she shifted against him. Her arm moved with sleepy uncertainty, then found its place again, her face nestling more firmly into the space just below his ribs. One of her hands, small and cold, slid up his chest and came to rest over his heart, the fingers curling slightly as though she were measuring its rhythm against her own. Her breath was warm where it ghosted over his skin, and the fine strands of her hair tickled along his side with each exhale.

Sirius brought his hand over hers, careful not to jostle her, his palm warm and trembling with something that wasn’t fear, but very close to it. He wasn’t anchoring her—she was anchoring him, even if she didn’t know it. That simple touch, the weight of her draped across him, the undeniable proof that he was not drifting somewhere beyond reach—it rooted him in a reality that still felt too fragile to trust. He closed his eyes for a moment and focused on the feel of her heartbeat beneath his fingers. Steady. Unrelenting. Alive.

“Can I ask you something?” Sirius’s voice had dropped to almost nothing, hoarse and hesitant, as though each word had to be coaxed past something brittle in his throat. His hand, still resting over Hermione’s, tensed slightly.

Snape said nothing, but the slight tilt of his head was enough. An invitation. Permission.

Sirius’s gaze didn’t lift. He stared at the tangle of curls against his chest, the weight of her grounding him, tethering him to the now. “Where’s Remus?”

The question cracked the air like ice. No spell was cast, no curse uttered, but the room seemed to recoil nonetheless. The silence that followed was sharp, too heavy to be ignored, pressing in from all sides like the walls themselves were holding their breath.

Snape didn’t answer at once. He looked down at his hands, fingers curling into fists against his lap as his jaw tightened. The shadows played cruel tricks on his face, carving deeper lines into features already too lean. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, worn thin with restraint. “I think Hermione or Harry should tell you that.”

There was something in the way he said it—something final, something that rang with a quiet grief too personal to share. Then, without looking up, without waiting for reply or protest, he turned the chair and wheeled himself out of the room, leaving behind only the hush of retreating wheels and a silence that refused to settle.

Sirius didn’t move. He couldn’t, even if he’d wanted to. The weight of Hermione against him was the only thing keeping his body from collapsing in on itself. A sound tore free from his throat before he even realised it was forming—a guttural, broken thing that vibrated through his chest like the remnants of a scream and a sob caught in a vice. It was raw, too full of everything he hadn’t yet processed, hadn’t yet faced. The kind of sound you make when there’s no language vast enough to contain the loss.

He buried his face into the wild curls spilling across her shoulder, letting the scent of her—salt and smoke and something vaguely floral—fill his lungs. She didn’t stir, but her warmth was still there, solid and real and impossibly present. He clung to her, not with desperation but with something more fragile. Reverence. Like if he let go, even for a second, he’d drift back into whatever void he’d clawed his way out of.

He felt the full, aching truth of it thud against his ribs like a second heartbeat. He had missed everything. The battles. The pain. The years. The chance to hold Remus one last time. He’d lost time in the most final way imaginable—and now he was back, returned to a life that had moved on without him.

Grimmuald - 2001 - Hermione

Hermione woke slowly, her limbs entangled with warmth and the worn familiarity of cotton sheets. Her body felt heavy, like it had been soaked in sleep far too long, and her mind lingered somewhere just shy of full consciousness. She was suspended in that fragile twilight between dreams and waking, where nothing quite made sense and everything was thick with memory. The heat around her wasn’t just the warmth of blankets—it was living, pulsing, too warm to be ordinary. And someone was watching her. That realisation struck like a whisper against the skin. Not hostile, but intense. She blinked blearily, her eyes adjusting to the low light, and when the world finally came into focus, she was met with storm-grey eyes.

“Good morning, little love,” came the voice she hadn’t dared to believe would ever speak again, its playful gravel cracking through her ribs. Sirius grinned, that familiar roguish grin that had once infuriated her and now disarmed her completely. It was too much. It was all too much.

She shattered, not with a graceful descent but with the wild, uncontainable force of something long held back finally splitting at the seams. It wasn’t delicate. It was wretched. A sob ripped free from her throat with a violence that startled even her, a raw, animal sound borne of too many sleepless nights, too many memories stitched into silence.

Tears flooded her eyes, hot and stinging, tracing familiar paths down her cheeks as she collapsed forward, burying her face in the heat of his chest. Her hands gripped at him instinctively, palms splaying wide as though her touch alone could anchor him to this world, as though he might disappear again if she let go. Her breath hitched and broke in a series of panicked gasps as the truth of it hit her again—he was here. Solid and impossibly real.

And worse, he was smiling. That ridiculous, rakish grin of his was stretched across his face as though he hadn’t just returned from five years of silence. As though he hadn’t vanished through the veil and left her with the ghosts. Her heart stuttered. How could he smile like that? Like it hadn’t broken her to lose him. Like it wouldn’t break him to learn what had been lost in return.

He had stirred the day before, though only faintly, and only for fleeting minutes. Long enough for her to whisper fractured truths into the stillness between them, for her to give him a name to cling to, and to let her trembling fingers skim across his cheek like he was something sacred, fragile, and still uncertain. His eyes had opened, fever-glazed and unsteady, but she had seen the flicker of recognition there. She had held his gaze as if it were a lifeline, had haltingly told him that he was home. That she had brought him back. Her voice had cracked, the words spilling over her tongue like broken glass, too sharp and too soft all at once. She had spoken them with the reverence of someone confessing a sin and offering a miracle in the same breath.

But the fever had taken him again, and sleep—deep, dreamless, drugged by magic and time—had dragged him back down. She had watched his breathing even out. Had stayed awake through most of that night, unable to do anything but stare at the rise and fall of his chest and wonder what sort of man would emerge when he returned fully to himself.

Now, he was awake. Not just blinking through fever, not just a ghost wearing Sirius Black’s face. Truly awake. There was sharpness behind his eyes, a clarity in the way he held her gaze, and that smile—infuriating and beloved in equal measure—stretched across his mouth like he had never been gone. It lit his face in a way that made her ache.

And she was going to have to break it. She was going to have to take that smile and crush it with everything he had missed. With everything the world had taken in his absence. And the thought of that nearly broke her in two.

She had pulled Sirius back from the edge of oblivion only to offer him a world that had moved on without him, a world that had shed blood and broken bonds while he had hovered somewhere beyond time. And now he was here, breathing beside her, his warmth grounding her, his gaze cutting through the fog—and she had to break him. There was no soft way to say it. He was the last. The only one left. The final ember of a fire long extinguished.

She would be the one to hand him that truth—bare, cracked, and ugly. She would be the one to place in his hands the ruin of what was once a family. And gods, how that truth ached in her throat, how it burned like betrayal on her tongue.

Her breath hitched, erratic and shallow, caught somewhere between the sting of guilt and the weight of everything she hadn’t yet found the courage to say. Words clung to her ribs like thorns, sharp and reluctant. There were names she hadn’t spoken aloud in days—names that would shatter the silence between them with unbearable finality. Remus. Tonks. The war. The tiny boy left behind with eyes too wise and grief too old.

Teddy. Oh gods, Teddy. Her godson. The child who had once curled against her side with a stuffed dragon tucked under one arm and questions far too big for his tiny frame pressing against his tongue. The little boy with his mother’s luminous laugh and his father’s quiet soul, whose hair changed colours when he was overwhelmed, who used to grip her hand in his sleep like it anchored him to the world. She hadn’t thought of him in days. Maybe even months. She couldn’t even remember the last time she had written to Andromeda, let alone visited. What kind of person did that? What kind of guardian let the memory of her godchild slip through the cracks of her own spiralling grief?

A sick kind of guilt bloomed in her stomach—thick, viscous, clinging to her ribs like oil. It didn’t just twist; it churned, coiling itself into the hollow of her chest with the certainty of self-condemnation. She was the worst kind of coward. No, it was worse than that. She wasn’t just a coward—she was the kind of woman who had played god, who had torn open the veil between life and death, who had dragged Sirius back from whatever lay beyond, and in doing so, had forgotten the boy left behind. She had traded one resurrection for another silence. And what did that make her, really?

Her breath came in tight, erratic gasps that caught high in her chest and refused to budge. Her lungs burned with the effort, each inhale a shallow theft rather than a gift. The room skewed sideways as though the world itself had tilted off its axis. Colours sharpened and blurred all at once, and a high-pitched buzzing filled her ears, drowning out everything else. It was like a thousand bees had swarmed inside her skull, wings beating against her temples. Her vision narrowed, the edges of the room pulsing in and out like it was struggling to contain her panic.

Sirius was speaking—his lips moved, she could see that much—but the sound didn’t reach her. It was muffled, distant, distorted by the overwhelming static roaring inside her head. Every heartbeat thundered like a drumline, deafening and irregular, echoing in her bones. Her hands trembled uncontrollably. Her skin prickled as if ants crawled just beneath the surface. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. It was as though the cotton of sleep hadn’t faded but had thickened and solidified, winding around her ribs and constricting her chest with every frantic breath. It clung to her lungs like wet fabric, heavy and suffocating, and all she could do was drown in it.

“I’m so sorry, Sirius. So, so sorry,” she managed between heaving breaths. The words cracked, jagged with panic. She didn’t even know what she was apologising for anymore. For resurrecting him. For the time he lost. For everything she hadn’t said. For everything she’d done.

Then arms wrapped around her, grounding and firm. Not tentative, not hesitant—just solid, like stone warmed by fire. His chest was beneath her cheek, rising and falling with slow, steady patience. “Shhh... It’s okay, little love. I’ve got you,” he murmured, the sound vibrating against her ear.

She clung to him with the desperation of someone unravelled from the inside out, as though the fragile strands of her identity were slipping between her fingers and only his touch could hold them together. Her fists balled in the fabric of his shirt, her entire body trembling from the aftershocks of fear she couldn’t name and couldn’t escape. It was absurd, unfair, cruel—he had just come back from the dead, and still he was the one offering comfort. He, who should have been splintered by the weight of what had been lost. He, who had every right to fall apart.

But no. He was steady. And she was the one fracturing.

She felt the shame of it swell in her throat, thick and acidic. How fucking pathetic. That was the only phrase that looped through her mind with any coherence. Over and over, like a curse she couldn’t shake.

She was meant to be the strong one. The one who’d stood before rituals older than reason, who’d cracked open magic forbidden and unforgiving, who’d dragged her own sanity across broken glass just to bring him home. She had made the impossible choice, borne the burden of power no one should ever wield—and now, here she was, sobbing like a child into the shoulder of the man she’d resurrected.

Harry had moved forward, hadn’t he? He bore his pain with clenched teeth and determined strides. Ron had retreated into something that resembled peace—domestic, dull, safe. And her? She had stayed. She was still here. In the house that reeked of death and memory, still pacing the same warped floorboards, still orbiting her grief like it was gravity and she had no choice but to obey.

Grimmauld Place stood like a relic caught between time and memory, both a tomb and a sanctuary depending on the day. Its air was thick with secrets and sorrow, its walls steeped in the residue of lives lost and half-lived. Every creaking floorboard, every darkened portrait, seemed to hum with stories no one dared speak aloud. A madhouse filled with ghosts and half-healed wounds. A haven for people who refused therapy and clung instead to potions and pain and stubborn loyalty. They should’ve all been institutionalised—or at the very least dragged into the twenty-first century for a proper fucking intervention. But no. They were here, broken and bleeding, held together by will and whisky.

She let out a laugh—sharp, humourless, frayed at the edges. It barely made it out of her throat before Sirius tightened his hold on her, the warmth of his hand spanning her back like he was afraid she’d fly apart.

“Hey, little love,” he whispered, his voice a low hum of reassurance, the kind of sound that seeped into the marrow and softened everything raw. His tone was steady, unflinching, a lifeline cast in warm syllables. He held her tighter, not possessively, but with the protective firmness of someone who had felt her fall apart in his arms and would not allow her to slip any further. “Whatever’s going on, I’ve got you,” he said again, like a vow, anchoring her with the weight of his presence.

She tried. She truly did. Tried to breathe like him, to match the measured inhale and exhale of a man who’d only just returned from death and was somehow more composed than she’d ever managed to be. Slowly, painstakingly, her lungs followed his lead. Her body began to remember stillness.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered again, her voice small and splintered, barely audible against the hush between them. The words spilled out of her without thought, not born of any singular guilt, but stitched into the fabric of her being after months of carrying too many burdens alone. It had become instinctive, this endless apologising, like a rosary she clutched in the dark. Each apology was another knot in the thread of her shame, woven through her bones until she couldn’t separate remorse from identity. The self-recrimination didn’t ebb with comfort; it throbbed beneath her skin like a bruise too deep to ever fade.

“No need to apologise, Hermione,” he murmured, his fingers curling gently through her tangled hair, moving with deliberate tenderness, as though afraid that too much pressure might shatter the fragile calm she was only just beginning to reclaim. His voice was steady but laced with a kind of quiet urgency, the sort of careful concern that came from someone who had seen the worst in people and still chose to stay. “But will you tell me what brought this panic on?” The question wasn’t a demand—it was an invitation. His grey eyes searched her face, soft with worry and something else, something that felt like unwavering trust. He didn’t flinch from her pain. He held it, cradled it, as though it was as important to him as his own healing. And somehow, that made it all the harder to speak.

She swallowed, the motion catching painfully in her throat, as though her body were reluctant to allow the truth passage. Her voice, when it came, was fractured, each syllable splintering like glass under strain. “I... I just realised,” she began, the hesitation dragging out the moment like a blade across skin, “that I need to tell you everything you missed.” Her breath hitched again, a soft, involuntary sound that carried the weight of all her dread. “And... you’re going to hate me for it.” The words hung between them, brittle and unforgiving, and she felt their truth settle over her like ash.

He didn’t hesitate. With the sort of instinct born of both pain and love, he shifted them upright, his body groaning in protest. Muscles that had only recently remembered how to exist in the living world screamed with the motion, but he ignored it, blinking through the sharp ache as he adjusted her weight in his arms. Then, without ceremony, he pulled her fully into his lap, wrapping her up as if he could shield her from everything—her guilt, her fear, the past. He didn’t flinch at the awkward angle of it or the jolt of discomfort that passed through his still-fragile limbs. She fit against him like something vital had been returned to its rightful place.

His arms locked around her with a ferocity that was all heart and no hesitation, one hand pressing her head firmly to his chest, the other curling around her spine, his palm spanning the length of it like a promise. There was no trembling in his touch, only resolve. Like he believed—utterly and without question—that if he simply held her tight enough, all her broken parts might find their way back together.

“You daft woman,” he murmured into her curls, his lips brushing her scalp. His voice was low and rough with unshed things, but the affection in it was steady, anchoring. “Nothing in this world could make me hate you. Nothing. Not even that brilliant, stubborn head of yours.”

She shifted as if to pull back, to say something sharp or self-effacing, to unravel the comfort with a truth too jagged to touch—but he tightened his hold before she could speak. Somehow, impossibly, he knew. Her body sagged into him instead, caught by the honesty in his grip. And there, in that tangle of limbs and sorrow, she felt it—his belief in her. It held no conditions. No doubts. Only warmth and gravity.

“Shut up,” he added, but the words were soaked in tenderness, not reprimand. They settled over her like a warm blanket, wrapping her in something safe, something known. His hand continued its slow rhythm through her hair, grounding her with every pass. “Harry came while you were sleeping,” he continued, voice low and measured, like he was offering pieces of a story too delicate to rush. “He brought lunch. Sat with me for a bit. Told me some things.” He paused for a beat, long enough for her to feel the weight of what he wouldn’t yet say. “He said we won.” Another pause. The quiet stretched, laden with the grief beneath those words. “But we lost people too.” The softness in his voice cracked just slightly, and she felt the tremor of it in his arms. Not just sorrow. Reverence. For the ones they’d buried and the ones who still remained.

His voice trembled, subtle but undeniable, like a ripple across still water disturbed by something deeper beneath the surface. She felt it in the slow rise and fall of his chest, in the almost imperceptible tightening of the arms wrapped around her, and in the steady beat of his heart that was not as even as it had been just moments before. The tremor wasn’t fear, nor anger, but the raw edge of a man barely keeping emotion in check—a man returned to life with more loss than he could yet name, but still capable of this steady, grounding kind of grace.

“I know, Hermione,” he said, and the words came soft, thick with something too large for the silence between them. “And I am still so fucking glad you took a chance on me.” He didn’t rush it. Each syllable seemed pulled from the marrow of him. “I’m glad to be here. Truly.”

There was no bravado in his voice, none of the rakish arrogance that once filled his laughter. This wasn’t the voice of Sirius Black, the Marauder. This was just Sirius, battered but breathing, whispering a truth so simple and sincere it cleaved straight through her guilt and settled like balm against her grief.

She folded herself into him like parchment to flame. Pressed her nose to the hollow between neck and shoulder, breathing in cider and leather and that inexplicable scent that was just... Sirius. Her arms wrapped around his waist, squeezing back as hard as he held her.

“I’m sorry about Remus,” she whispered, her voice barely a thread of sound, as though even naming him might unravel what fragile peace they'd built in the last few minutes. The words weren’t nearly enough. Nothing could be. But they were all she had—the only truth she could force past the knot of grief and guilt lodged in her throat.

She felt his breath before she heard his reply, warm and soft against her scalp, and when he spoke, his voice was a low, steady thrum, deep with understanding. “I know, love,” he murmured, each syllable deliberate, as though he was holding the memory of their friend in his mouth with reverence. His lips brushed her hair, a touch so gentle it nearly broke her. “So am I.”

He didn’t say more. He didn’t have to. His silence spoke of nights spent laughing beside a fire, of arguments stretched long into morning, of shared missions and parallel scars. It spoke of brotherhood and war and a hollow space that no resurrection could fill. And wrapped up in his arms, Hermione felt it all—the mourning, the memory, and the flickering, fragile hope that somehow they might learn to carry it together.

Grimmauld Place – 2001 – Snape’s POV

Severus was in the kitchen, the flickering gaslight painting long shadows across the scuffed floors, as he wheeled himself slowly back and forth along the length of the table. He wasn't paying attention to the boy—no, to Harry—despite the stream of conversation spilling from the young man’s mouth. Months of living under the same roof, of shared silences and rare, brittle confessions, had made it nearly impossible to continue referring to him as Potter. Harry, for all his stubbornness and scars, had earned that shift.

But Severus wasn’t truly listening. He was moving, pacing in the only way he still could. The smooth glide of wheels gave him rhythm, something to anchor the tide of restless thought crashing in the back of his mind. After he had left Black’s room, the quiet in his own head had grown unbearable. Sirius had woken. Fully, it seemed. Not a fever dream, not the flickering ghost of a man once full of fire, but Sirius Black, alive and present. Merlin help them all.

Harry had gone up shortly after to bring food to them—both to the mutt and to Hermione. He had returned some time later, recounting that Sirius was awake and lucid, that Hermione was still sleeping. Harry’s voice had faltered when he mentioned the conversation he’d had with Black, the one where he told him, in broad, brief strokes, what had happened in the years since 1996. Since Sirius had disappeared into the Veil.

Severus knew the man wasn’t a fool. Whatever vague response he had given Sirius when the inevitable question about Remus arose—it had been enough. The sob Black had let out, raw and sudden, just before Severus had wheeled himself out of the room, still echoed in his ears. That sound had carried too much. It had carried everything—the unmistakable recognition of truth landing too hard, the jagged regret for years lost and friendships fractured, and the deep, unrelenting grief of knowing one of the few who had ever truly understood him was gone. The weight of it settled like lead in the space between them, too solid to ignore, too painful to fully acknowledge. It wasn’t just a sound. It was a release, a collapse, the way only someone who had held themselves together too long could break. The moment had landed like a blade beneath the ribs.

“Maybe I should go check on them,” Severus murmured, the words heavy with the weight of his restlessness. He hadn’t intended to say them aloud, not really. They slipped out like breath does in cold air—unbidden but impossible to ignore. His fingers curled tightly around the handle of his wheelchair, knuckles pale against the worn leather. The need to move, to do something, clashed with the part of him that feared what he might find upstairs. Conversations like the one Hermione was likely having with Black were laden with landmines, each word capable of rupturing fragile healing. Still, the silence down here grated on him in ways he hadn’t anticipated, each tick of the clock a needle against his spine.

“Maybe we should give them time to talk,” Harry replied from his place at the table, his tone measured. Familiar now. Not the eager Gryffindor child of old, but something older, softer around the edges. The war had changed them all, but grief had carved Harry into something recognisable and unrecognisable in the same breath.

Severus studied him for a long, drawn-out moment, his gaze sharpening as he tried to piece together what had changed in the boy—no, the man—seated across from him. The set of Harry’s shoulders was looser than it had been during the war, but not unguarded. There was still tension in the line of his jaw, something tight and wary just beneath the surface, but it wasn’t the same brittle defiance Severus remembered from years past. There was a stillness to him now that unsettled Severus more than shouting ever could. Finally, his voice edged with suspicion and something far older than annoyance, he asked, “Why are you so calm, Potter?”

Harry arched one brow with exaggerated ease, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth, the sort of expression that made him look far too much like James for Severus’s liking. He leaned back slightly in his chair, folding his arms in that maddeningly casual way only a Potter could manage. “So that’s where we are again, is it?” he said, tone light but unmistakably teasing. “Back to surnames and sharp edges?”

“Don’t get cheeky with me, boy,” Severus said, his tone dry but void of real sharpness. The words fell from his lips more out of habit than conviction, lacking the sting they might have once carried. There was no heat behind them, no real intent to wound—just the echo of an old rhythm, dulled now by familiarity and the soft erosion of grief. He watched Harry with narrowed eyes, but even he couldn’t deny the faint flicker of reluctant amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Harry grinned and reached into his pocket. “Here,” he said, pulling out something small and rectangular. It took Severus a second to realise what he was looking at—a baby monitor, of all things. He looked back at Harry as though he had sprouted horns.

Severus stared at the object in Harry’s hand as though it were something eldritch and half-alive, his brows knitting tightly in suspicion. The words left his mouth in a low growl, not quite a demand but certainly not gentle curiosity either. “How in Merlin’s name did you manage that ?” There was too much cleverness in Harry’s casual display of arcane-woven Muggle technology, too much familiarity with the uncanny, and it itched at Severus’s sense of control like a spell cast without proper grounding. The monitor blinked innocently, its soft light illuminating just how far the boy had come since the days of bungled potions and impulsive hexes.

“George helped me charm it,” Harry said with a shrug. “Couple of repurposed Muggle detection charms, bit of runic transference, some chaos magic I didn’t ask too many questions about. Makes it work here. The screen shows Sirius’ room.”

Severus blinked slowly. Of course. Harry bloody Potter. Clever in ways people overlooked. Truly Lily’s son.

He turned to the monitor just in time to see Sirius and Hermione moving about the room. Sirius was helping her adjust a leather jacket—his, unmistakably his, the one she had claimed not long after her return and now wore like a second skin—and Hermione was smiling. A real smile. The sort that crept in slowly, unsure at first, then bloomed despite itself. The kind of smile no one wore often these days. Then she hugged him, full-bodied and fierce, and Sirius pressed a kiss to the top of her head. A moment later, they both exited the frame. Harry tapped the screen and slid the monitor back into his pocket.

Severus rolled himself towards the stove, the weight of anticipation coiling beneath his ribs like a tightening string. With a precise flick of his wand, he lit the burner, the wandwork clean, practiced, but entirely automatic. The kettle, old and battered copper, began to hum as the flame caught, its base glowing gently while shadows danced over the stone walls. The kitchen, for all its quiet, felt thick with expectancy. Every pop and creak of the old house seemed amplified, as though Grimmauld Place itself held its breath.

He busied his hands with the familiar ritual of tea-making, grateful for the distraction. The rattle of ceramic, the rustle of dried leaves scooped into the pot—it grounded him in a way few things could. He focused on those small sounds, on the warmth blooming in the air, until the slow, steady cadence of footsteps on the stairs broke the stillness.

When Hermione and Sirius stepped into view, Severus didn’t turn immediately. He simply said, tone level and voice measured, “I made tea.”

Hermione’s face lit up as she crossed the space between them with easy familiarity and dropped herself—without hesitation—into his lap. She wrapped her arms around him with a kind of affection that still startled him, then pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. “Thank you so much, Severus,” she whispered.

It didn’t take a master of Legilimency to recognise the subtle shift in Hermione’s demeanour—the way she had softened, the gentle warmth in her voice when she addressed him, the casual intimacy of her presence in his lap. Sirius must have told her about their conversation. There was no other explanation for the ease with which she greeted him, the gratitude laced not only in her words but in the tenderness of her expression. It was there, quiet and telling, in the way she sought him out as though she owed him something unspoken. That conversation—the one that carried weight neither of them had acknowledged aloud—had clearly been shared. And now, its echo hummed gently between them, unspoken but understood. 

He returned the embrace with surprising ease, brushing a kiss to her temple. “You’re most welcome, little witch.” The words came naturally now. Not without thought, but with a sense of quiet inevitability.

Sirius took the seat next to Harry as Severus wheeled himself to the table with Hermione still perched comfortably in his lap. The tea floated behind them, charmed to pour gently into the mismatched cups Severus had laid out earlier. A cup for each of them. He had expected Hermione to shift into a proper chair, but she remained as she was—solid, present, warm. He didn’t object.

Harry raised an eyebrow, his expression caught somewhere between curiosity and caution, but he refrained from voicing whatever thought lingered behind his eyes. His silence wasn’t dismissive, rather observant—as though he, too, was waiting to see how the strange dynamics now shifting between them all would settle. Sirius, on the other hand, looked positively entertained. A grin stretched wide across his face, far too knowing and self-satisfied, like a man who had stumbled into a joke halfway through and still managed to find it bloody hilarious. The glint in his eyes, storm-grey and mischievous, betrayed the delight he took in the surreal sight of Snape calmly sipping tea with a witch nestled in his lap and Harry Potter not throwing a tantrum about it.

“Could someone explain how the fuck this happened?” Sirius asked, motioning vaguely to the three of them seated around the table like this was just another afternoon tea and not a gathering of the dead, the haunted, and the girl who wouldn’t let them stay buried.

Hermione dropped her gaze to her hands, fingers curling inwards, as if trying to hold onto something that kept slipping through her grasp. Her shoulders hunched slightly, a quiet signal of retreat, of memory pressing in too close.

“After the war, Hermione bolted,” Harry said, his voice low but clear, each word carefully measured. “Left Britain. Cut ties. Just… disappeared for a while.” His eyes didn’t leave her, but there was no accusation in them. Just quiet acknowledgement. An old wound, not quite closed.

Sirius’ jaw tightened, the muscle twitching beneath skin that had only recently regained its warmth. His eyes stayed on Hermione, dark and unreadable. He didn’t speak, didn’t press. Whatever questions were rising in his chest, he held them back.

“Then I woke up,” Severus said, his voice steady but low, each word carefully shaped as though speaking them too quickly might shatter the fragile thread of memory they carried. “St Mungo’s had her listed as my emergency contact. I had no idea if she would come. But she did. Walked into the room like she had never left, though the world behind her had crumbled. She came back, not just for me, but for whatever pieces of this mess she could still carry.”

Sirius turned fully then, eyes lingering on Hermione in silence. There was something in his expression—not judgement, not anger. It was softer, more tentative. A kind of cautious understanding, the kind a man gives when recognising grief in someone else’s bones. The silence between them held, gentle but weighty.

“Mia saved us all,” Harry said, his voice quiet but filled with conviction, as his gaze remained anchored to Hermione. There was no flourish to the words, no dramatics, only the unwavering truth of someone who had lived it, who had watched her claw them back from the edge more times than they deserved. “Just like she saved you, Sirius. Whether any of us deserved it or not.”

Hermione shook her head, the motion tight and trembling, more instinct than intent. Her voice, when it came, cracked with the weight of uncertainty. “I… I didn’t…” The words trailed off, lost to the storm that surged behind her eyes. Her hands twisted in her lap, fingers clenching and unclenching as if trying to find something to anchor her to the moment. The breath she drew in was shallow, caught just below her throat, and her chest rose in a stuttered rhythm, not quite able to settle. She wasn’t denying what they said—she simply couldn’t accept it, not when it felt like she had merely survived rather than saved. Guilt curled through her like smoke, tangling with the exhaustion she could never seem to shake, and she hated the way her voice faltered, hated how she couldn’t meet their eyes without feeling like a fraud.

Severus shifted slightly in his chair, the faint creak of the wheelchair’s frame barely audible over the quiet hum of the kitchen. He reached beneath the table with a measured movement, his hand settling gently on Hermione’s knee—not rushed, not fleeting, but firm and present. His thumb moved in a slow, steady arc, a silent reassurance passed between them through the warmth of skin and the weight of memory. It wasn’t just a grounding touch—it was gratitude, solidarity, and the quiet promise that he would not let her carry the burden alone. She blinked, startled not just by the words but by the weight of the truth behind them, and turned her head slowly to meet his gaze. Severus’s expression held no irony, no bitterness—only a quiet certainty that settled into her like warmth on a winter morning. There was history in that look, years of pain and salvation wrapped in shared silences and impossible choices. For a moment, the world shrank to the chair they shared and the ghosts they carried.

“You saved every man in this room, little witch,” he said, his voice low, steady—not loud, but grounding in its quiet finality. It settled into the space like stone, undeniable and solid.

“Yeah, you really did, Mia,” Harry added after a pause, his voice softened by memory. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, but it was wistful, more shadow than light. “I gave Grimmauld Place to Hermione after the war. Not just the house—she got the whole of the Black inheritance too. I owed her that much, and more. She stayed when no one else could bear to. Put up with my drunk, grieving arse for six whole months. I was wrecked, Sirius. Couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. Everything here screamed of you. The walls, the photos, the bloody silence.”

Sirius’s breath hitched faintly, and he murmured, “Oh, Pup,” his voice thick with emotion. He didn’t move, didn’t speak further. The name alone carried so much, reaching out across the grief-stained gap between the man he had been and the boy he used to protect.

Hermione remained quiet, eyes fixed on her lap, while Severus’s hand never left her knee.

Harry exhaled slowly, his fingers wrapping tighter around the teacup in front of him. “It was Hermione who told me to find somewhere else. Somewhere without ghosts. She said I needed space to breathe. That’s when I remembered the old Potter cottage—it was still mine. And she helped me fix it. Every charm, every board, every cracked window. She helped me piece together a life I wasn’t sure I deserved. Helped me find Ginny again. Helped me come back to myself.” He turned to Hermione fully now, eyes shining, no longer the war-hardened soldier, but a young man unravelling at the seams. “And I never once asked how you were doing. I never stopped to realise how fucking hard it must’ve been for you too. I’m sorry, Mia. I should’ve seen it. I’m so, so sorry.” 

“Oh, it’s fine, Harry,” Hermione replied, though her voice trembled beneath the forced casualness. She exhaled sharply, the sound catching in her throat like it had been snagged on the raw edge of a sob. Severus, watching closely, could see the struggle etched across her features—the tightness in her jaw, the way her lips pressed together too hard, too long, as though by sheer force of will she could keep herself from breaking apart. She wasn’t succeeding. Not really. Not entirely. Her eyes glistened, a tremor blooming in her lower lip.

Across from her, Sirius sat silent, a shadow of grief flickering behind his storm-grey eyes. His composure had fractured in a way Severus hadn’t seen since the war, and a single tear slipped down his cheek before he turned his gaze to the worn wood of the table, as if it held answers he had long stopped hoping for.

“No. It isn’t,” Harry said, his voice cracking like glass beneath strain. “Hermione, you’ve been there for me since I was a child. You’ve given me more than I could ever repay—you’ve given me him , twice now. And I didn’t even notice.” He paused, the weight of his own failure thick in the room. “I didn’t see how cruel Ron was being to you. I didn’t see how Ginny was ghosting you, ignoring every letter, for years while you were in Australia. You were alone, and I let you be.”

He swallowed hard, then added, softer but with unwavering conviction, “This is why I chose you, Mia. Why I will always choose you.”

Hermione’s breath hitched, and in one sudden movement, she surged from Severus’s lap and across the space to Harry. Her arms flung around him, desperate, clinging, as if trying to fold herself into the one friend who had always mattered most. 

Hermione turned her head slowly, her gaze locking with Sirius’s. Her voice, still soft around the edges from emotion, carried a quiet resolve. "I'll return Grimmauld Place and the Black inheritance to you, Sirius. I promise. It was always meant to be yours."

Sirius gave a sharp, incredulous snort as he swiped the back of his hand over damp eyes. “Like hell you are. Do you have any idea how brilliant this is? A Muggleborn—one who bloody well defeated Voldemort—holding the entire Black estate? My dear, deceased mother must be shrieking herself hoarse in whatever version of the afterlife she ended up in. Serves her right, the old hag.”

He paused then, glancing around the kitchen as if the memory of her portrait might come screaming to life from the peeling wallpaper. “Speaking of that wretched woman, why in Merlin’s name isn’t she raising hell right now? Where is the banshee chorus?”

Severus’s expression twisted with something close to pride as he crossed his arms. “The little witch,” he said, nodding toward Hermione with unmistakable fondness, “took a sledgehammer to her—literally. Smashed the entire wall she was mounted on into rubble. Then, for good measure, burned the remnants to ash and legally transferred the house into her name. Tested and witnessed. Thorough and irreversible.”

Sirius’s entire body tensed, not with anger but with sheer, vibrating delight. He looked utterly dumbfounded, his mouth slack before curling into the widest grin Severus had seen on him since he’d come back from the dead. “No. You’re bloody joking.”

“Not in the slightest,” Severus said, arching an eyebrow in emphasis. “She even documented the destruction. Quite methodical, really.”

Sirius turned to Hermione, still grinning like a child given fireworks and permission to use them. His voice dropped, all mischief and warmth. “I want to see that. Show me later, little love. That’s something I need to witness with my own eyes.”

Across the table, Harry rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “What is it with the two of you and all these ridiculous pet names for her? It’s like I’m stuck in a soppy love letter.”

Hermione let out a laugh—light and breathless, a sound that had become far too rare in recent years. It spilled out of her before she had the chance to catch it, unguarded and pure, a ripple of something nearly forgotten. The sound danced through the air like sunlight spilling through a cracked window, softening the room and stirring something quiet within them all. Her cheeks flushed with the sudden release, and her eyes lit with a warmth that made her look younger than she had in months. From his seat, Severus watched the change wash over her. It was more than a laugh—it was life clawing its way back in, and it struck him, sharp and unexpectedly tender. The air shifted, heavier with meaning. There was a thrum in his chest he hadn’t expected, a tight pull of something akin to joy, foreign but not unwelcome. Not quite happiness, but the memory of it, the whisper of something that might one day grow into it again.

Harry sat down and leaned forward, as if dragging them all gently back to the grim logistics of reality. “Okay, but how do we now register that Sirius is truly alive?” he asked. His tone was light, but the undercurrent was serious. Hermione moved to sit between Severus and Sirius, her body brushing against them both, her presence suddenly a hinge upon which the moment turned. “I mean, we did make a run for it after Kingsley threatened to take Sirius.”

Sirius’s head snapped up, his eyes wide with disbelief. “He what ?” he asked, voice sharp with incredulity, the word landing with weight. Before the tension could spike, Hermione reached for Sirius’s hand, her fingers lacing through his with practiced familiarity. Her grip was firm, grounding, and he looked at her with something between awe and confusion. On her other side, Severus matched her gesture, his hand finding hers beneath the table, anchoring her with quiet solidarity. She gave them both a soft, almost bashful smile, a rare expression of vulnerability flanked by two hands that steadied her.

“Oh yes,” said Harry, his grin a little wicked. “We broke so many laws, and then Hermione—brilliant, terrifying Hermione—busted us out with an illegal Portkey. It was impressive, really.”

The witch in question blushed, the pink rising in her cheeks betraying a mixture of embarrassment and pride. “Kingsley won’t lift a finger,” she muttered, chin tilted slightly in defiance. “If he does, he’d have to admit that a blood ritual happened right under his eye, in the Ministry itself. I’d love to see him explain that to the Wizengamot.”

Harry scratched his head, clearly amused. Across the table, Sirius was still staring at Hermione like she had just sprouted wings—or horns—and he couldn’t quite decide if he should kiss her or bolt from the room. The man looked utterly undone, and Severus took a moment of petty satisfaction in not being the only one thrown off balance by her.

Harry exhaled slowly, the faintest thread of exasperation lacing his voice as he posed the question that had been looming like a shadow over the hearth-warmed quiet of the kitchen. “But seriously, how do we actually register Sirius as, you know, not dead ?” His fingers drummed lightly against the rim of his teacup, the gentle tap-tap-tap carrying more weight than his casual tone suggested.

Sirius shifted in his seat, the leather creaking beneath him as his storm-grey eyes moved with deliberate slowness—first to Hermione, where they lingered just a second too long, then to Severus, assessing with something bordering on wary respect, and finally to Harry. There was no trace of the roguish smirk he typically wore like armour, no wink or grin to disarm the weight of the moment. Instead, what settled across his features was a quiet, grim determination—an anchored resolve that had not been present in the Sirius Black they remembered. His voice, when it emerged, was low and measured, carrying an edge of steel, the kind sharpened by loss and forged in silence. "Easy," he said, the word flat and irrevocable, "We go to Gringotts." As though the entire world could hinge on those four syllables, and perhaps, in some ways, it did.

The effect was immediate and unmistakable. Severus, who had long since developed the unnerving talent of reading Hermione Granger with near-clairvoyant precision, observed the shift as if she had screamed. Her face didn't simply lose colour—it withdrew, as though her very spirit had recoiled from the words spoken aloud. The blood beneath her skin seemed to retreat all at once, her complexion fading to the grey pallor of dread. Her back straightened, not with pride or composure, but like a soldier expecting the strike of a blade. The breath she drew in caught mid-chest, thin and rasping, and her fingers clutched the edge of the battered kitchen table with such force that her knuckles whitened, the tension transferring into the grain of the wood as though she might anchor herself to reality through sheer touch.

Her lips parted, the barest trace of words hovering on the brink of utterance, but no sound came. Her gaze dropped, not slowly, but as if yanked downward by the weight of something unbearable. It collapsed into the table’s surface like a body yielding to gravity. Just moments ago, she'd been illuminated by laughter, by the fragile glimmer of hope or something dangerously close to joy, and now that fragile light was gone. The smile had vanished without a trace, leaving behind only silence, and in its place was something hollow. A shadow passed over her—not dramatic or stormy, but insidious, quiet, like the reemergence of old grief long buried and never fully healed. It was not an external force that unsettled her—it was something that twisted deep beneath her ribs and slithered into her lungs, coiling until each breath had to be pulled through the tight throat of memory.

Severus felt it like a shiver along his spine. The entire room fell into stillness, the weight of her reaction pressing down on them all. No one needed to say it aloud. They had all felt the shift. The warmth had gone out of the room. The fragile peace they'd built around this old kitchen table had, once more, begun to fracture.

"I can't go there," Hermione said, her voice little more than a breath. It was so soft they might have missed it, but the tremor in her words rang louder than a scream.

Harry’s head dropped in quiet understanding, the guilt obvious in the set of his jaw. Under the table, Severus tightened his grip on her hand in an unspoken gesture of solidarity. Sirius, however, glanced between them with growing confusion, the furrow in his brow deepening. “Will somebody share with the class?” he asked, his voice pitched with irritation that didn’t quite mask the unease creeping into his features.

Harry let out a long sigh and leaned forward slightly, hands clasped together as though bracing himself. “We, uh… we broke into Gringotts during the final days of the war. Bellatrix Lestrange’s vault. We were hunting Horcruxes. And, well… there might have been a dragon. Which we may have liberated. With us on its back.”

Sirius blinked. Severus closed his eyes for a moment. Of course there had been a dragon. Why not?

“The goblins,” Harry continued, his voice tight, “didn’t exactly take it well. They tolerate me because of the Chosen One business, and they deal with Ron because he’s male and pureblood. But Hermione? She’s not only Muggleborn, she’s the one they blame for leading the break-in. She hasn’t set foot in Gringotts since. She wouldn’t be safe there.”

Severus stared at Harry, and beside him Sirius did the same, the incredulity mirrored perfectly in their expressions. It was the kind of revelation so absurd, so outrageous, that even after years of war and madness, it still had the power to stun.

“What a spectacular load of bloody shite,” Severus muttered under his breath, though there was no true malice in the words—only the low, bitter recognition of a world still rigged against the ones who had done the most to save it.

Hermione lifted her chin slightly, her posture forcibly composed, though the tremor in her hands betrayed the effort it took to maintain it. Her voice emerged level, almost eerily calm, carrying that distant tone she wore like a shield when the world became too sharp. "It’s fine. Harry can go with you," she said, as if stating a logistical fact rather than slicing open an old wound.

Around the table, not a soul stirred. The air itself felt heavy, as though Hermione’s words had drawn all the warmth from it, leaving behind only stillness and a low thrum of sorrow. Her attempt at composure hung by a thread, but the truth was written in every fine line of tension across her face, in the way her shoulders pulled inward like a woman bracing for impact. The statement she’d made—a logistical deflection wrapped in calm—sat like lead between them all. It was not fine, and the fragile peace that had barely begun to settle cracked with a silence louder than any outburst. Her gaze, which had lifted with such brittle strength only moments ago, dropped again with the weight of grief and resignation. Her mouth was drawn in a line too tight for softness, the twitch of emotion in her jaw barely held at bay. No one refuted her words aloud, but none of them believed them. The lie, however quiet, threaded itself between them, a shared understanding none dared to speak.

Sirius broke the silence, voice cutting through the room like a blade made of steel and disbelief. “I agree with Snape. That is a load of absolute shite,” he said, eyes sharp as they landed on Hermione. His tone wasn’t cruel, only stunned by how far she seemed to have shrunk herself. “Sweetheart, you are the richest woman in the whole of the wizarding world. Do you even realise the magnitude of what that means? You hold the reins to one of the oldest and most powerful Houses in magical Britain.”

Severus, watching closely, saw the moment Hermione’s expression faltered. Her eyes widened—not dramatically, but in quiet, stunned confusion—as if this had somehow never crossed her mind. Sirius, undeterred, leaned forward with a voice filled not with jest, but with something close to reverence. “When Harry transferred the Black wealth to you, he didn’t just hand you some vaults and a few dusty heirlooms. He passed on everything—properties, ancestral lines, Wizengamot seats, noble titles. He made you Lady Black in every way that counts.” He threw Harry a sideways look that was half-smirk, half-affection. “Nice going, Pup.”

Hermione’s lips parted on a shallow, disbelieving breath, her voice little more than a whispered objection. “No.” The word came unbidden, edged with a fragile sort of horror, like someone watching a house of cards tumble after convincing themselves it was solid stone.

Her disbelief was etched across every line of her face, her expression suspended in that place between dread and astonishment. Her gaze remained fixed on Sirius as though he’d just rewritten the world, her cheeks blanched, the faint flush of life sapped from them in an instant. It was as if the kitchen itself had grown too vast, the space around her widening into an impossible chasm she couldn’t quite bridge.

“I didn’t know that,” Harry said quietly, his voice laced with unease as he stared at her with eyes just as wide. There was a genuine helplessness in him—an echo of the boy he once was, faced again with the impossible and unsure how to fix it.

Sirius, undeterred by the stunned silence, turned slowly to Severus. The two men locked eyes, something unspoken sparking between them. Despite Sirius’s paleness, the lingering heaviness in his limbs, and the faint tremor in his fingers, Severus could see it—Black’s mind was already churning. The reckless glint hadn’t dulled with death. He was thinking, planning, already stirring up trouble in that way only a Black ever could.

“Well then,” Sirius said, tone deceptively casual, though there was a steel core to it, “feel like helping me pen a rather pointed letter to Gringotts? Something with just the right balance of righteous fury and centuries-old political leverage?”

Hermione looked as though she might object, the beginnings of a protest curling on her tongue, but Severus silenced her with a simple, unflinching, “Obviously.” There was no hesitation in his voice, no pause for argument. It was the sort of certainty that brooked no discussion—and for once, Hermione didn’t fight it.

With that, Sirius pushed himself up from his seat, his movements still a touch shaky but gaining strength with every determined step. Severus followed, wheeling himself with purpose toward the hall. Together, they left the kitchen behind, the quiet murmurs of Harry and Hermione trailing in their wake.

As he reached the base of the staircase, Severus transferred to the chair lift, his motions smooth despite the fatigue humming in his bones. He glanced back once at the closed door of the kitchen and allowed the ghost of a smirk to rise on his face. Perhaps, he mused, having the mongrel around might prove useful after all.

Chapter Text

Grimmauld Place – 2001 – Snape’s POV

Severus had never liked silence. Not the real kind—the kind that came after screaming stopped, after spells discharged their last burst of light, after blood had already soaked into stone and there was nothing left to save. That kind of silence was not peace. It was aftermath. It was memory, hanging too heavily in the air, waiting to curdle into regret. Grimmauld Place had always been full of noise, even in its quiet moments—doors creaking open without warning, draughts muttering down stone hallways, the weary groan of a house too old and too burdened by its own history. But this morning, after Sirius had woken up alive and breathing fully and Hermione’s breakdown, there was only the kind of silence Severus despised.

It was strange, the quiet. Not just the absence of noise, but the void it left behind, echoing through his bones like an old curse. Ever since Hermione had moved him into Grimmauld Place—dragged him there, really, against every protesting instinct—there had always been sound. Music, specifically. The wireless playing constantly, sometimes loudly, sometimes barely a murmur beneath conversation or tension. At first, it had grated on him. He valued stillness, the kind of silence that let a mind settle. But then she told him why. She hated silence more than he did. She admitted, with brittle honesty one late night when he’d asked, that the silence reminded her of screams—her own, echoing through Malfoy Manor while Bellatrix carved into her skin. The music was armour, a ward against the war still playing on a loop inside her head. And Severus had found himself understanding in a way that required no words. If Bellatrix hadn’t already been dead, he would have gladly found a way to kill her himself. He was also fairly certain that Sirius would’ve helped him do it, without question or hesitation.

Now, without the faint hum of a record in the next room or the warble of a wizarding wireless broadcasting from somewhere down the hall, the house felt like a tomb. The silence seemed to coat the air, thick and suffocating, like fog turned into wool. Severus could feel the weight of it pressing against his ears, crawling beneath his skin, stirring old memories with a surgeon's precision. The kind of silence that stripped you bare and left you at the mercy of your mind. He hated that Hermione needed to drown her demons in melody, hated more that he understood why. There was a time when he too had needed distraction, some external noise to drown out the internal screaming. But nothing ever truly silenced it. Not music. Not potions. Not time. Only distraction, and even that was temporary. He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the stillness speak, and it said nothing kind.

He sat alone in the kitchen, one hand wrapped around a chipped mug of bitter tea he had no intention of finishing. Across from him, an untouched plate of toast had gone cold, as if mimicking the conversation that hadn’t happened. Sirius hadn’t come down yet. Hermione had disappeared upstairs after forcing herself into a mask of calm that didn’t fool anyone. And Harry had left early for Diagon Alley under the pretext of handling Ministry paperwork. Severus suspected it was an excuse to avoid the suffocating tension that now filled the house.

He exhaled slowly, the breath ragged, and let his gaze settle on the far wall. A hairline crack had begun to form beneath the freshly painted wall, just above the reclaimed oak skirting board, spidering out from a faint scorch mark that had once been charmed over and now bled through as if the house itself had decided to remember. It hadn’t been there yesterday. Grimmauld had been stripped and reborn under Hermione’s watchful hand. New floors laid, soot-blackened cabinets replaced with sleek cabinetry in dark elm, and every cursed portrait banished into whatever hell it deserved. And yet the rot found a way. No matter how many layers of paint she applied, no matter how many enchantments she wove into the walls, the past refused to stay buried. The house, like the rest of them, was coming undone at the seams, each crack a fracture line in their careful reconstruction. He supposed it was poetic in the worst possible way. They were rebuilding their lives atop the ashes of the last war, and all their foundations, no matter how beautifully restored, were rotting from the inside out.

The leather arm of his chair creaked as he shifted, drawing his blanket tighter across his legs. The damn nerve pain had flared again during the night, a dull throb that no potion could fully silence. He had lived through too much—Dark Marks and broken vows and the cold of a Shrieking Shack floor—to be undone by something as mundane as chronic pain. And yet it ate away at him with steady persistence, like guilt, or memory.

He should go upstairs. Check on the girl. But he didn’t. Because even now, after everything, Severus didn’t know how to comfort without scolding or shield without controlling. Hermione Granger had already carried too much weight in her young life. He had no right to add to it. Still, the image of her face from the day before—eyes wide with panic, voice thinned to a rasp, body shaking in the arms of a man freshly returned from the dead—refused to leave him.

And Sirius. Merlin help them all. Black was back, alive, and already pressing against the edges of Severus’s carefully managed equilibrium. He hadn’t hated him for years, not truly, but that didn’t mean he trusted the man. He didn’t trust the way Sirius looked at Hermione like she was something fragile and holy. He didn’t trust the way Harry softened around him. And most of all, he didn’t trust how easily the house had welcomed him back, like it had been waiting all this time for the bloodstained prince of its walls to reclaim his throne.

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the high curve of the chair. His mind - usually disciplined, sharp - was fogged this morning. Not sluggish, precisely, but tangled in emotion, in exhaustion, in things he’d never quite found the words to name. If he had been a different man, he might have called it grief. Or even hope. But he was Severus Snape. He called it inconvenient.

The sound of footsteps creaking down the stairs stirred him from his thoughts. He opened his eyes just as Hermione entered the kitchen, her hair still damp from a hurried shower, her jumper three sizes too big and unmistakably not hers. Likely Sirius’s. She was thinner than she should be, all angles beneath fabric, and the shadows beneath her eyes made her look like she hadn’t properly slept in weeks. But her spine was straight, her chin tilted upward in defiance of whatever emotion was clinging to her.

She hesitated in the doorway, her body still for a moment as her eyes adjusted to the unexpected sight of Severus in the kitchen. The morning light caught the damp ends of her hair, casting silver glints across dark strands as if the day itself was unsure of her presence. She was wrapped in a jumper far too large for her frame—Sirius’s, by the look of it—its hem hanging nearly to her knees, sleeves swallowing her hands. There was a flicker of something in her eyes, something raw and unguarded, before she managed a soft greeting. "You’re up early," she said, her voice low, as if speaking too loudly might crack whatever fragile moment had settled between them.

“I haven’t been to sleep,” he replied, his voice edged with that rasping dryness born of too many hours spent trapped in thought rather than slumber. The words hung in the air for a moment, brittle and matter-of-fact, like the admission of a wound long since cauterised but still aching. It wasn’t a complaint. It wasn’t even a warning. It was just the truth, offered plainly, as if it needed no further explanation. And perhaps, in that house and between those two, it didn’t.

Hermione hovered near the counter, fingers fiddling with the kettle as if uncertain whether she was welcome. As if unsure of anything. Severus nodded toward the opposite chair, and she took the seat slowly, curling her fingers around the chipped rim of a teacup he’d left out for her hours ago without realising.

They sat in silence for a time, though it wasn’t the stifling, brittle quiet that had filled the house earlier. This was different—softer, less suffocating. It was the kind of silence that settled between people who had survived the same storm and found themselves blinking at the aftermath, unsure of whether to mourn or be grateful. The kitchen, newly built and still smelling faintly of varnish and bergamot tea, wrapped around them like a held breath.

Hermione sat with her shoulders slightly hunched, her fingers wrapped around the teacup as if trying to draw warmth from it, as if grounding herself with the ceramic beneath her skin. Her gaze was not on Severus but distant, turned toward the cracked grout between tiles as if the answers might live there, hidden in the imperfections of a place they’d all tried so hard to perfect.

Then, her voice broke the stillness. It came small and unguarded, like it had slipped out before she could polish it into something stronger. “I didn’t think it would hurt this much to have him back.”

Severus didn’t answer at once. He understood precisely what she meant, in a way that didn’t require explanation. Joy and grief weren’t at odds with each other—they danced together, fed off one another, and arrived hand in hand when the moment demanded both. “Nothing about resurrection is ever simple,” he said eventually, his voice low and roughened by too many unslept nights. “Especially when it comes after so much devastation.”

Her shoulders folded inward, as though trying to make herself small enough to disappear into the curve of the chair. The teacup trembled slightly in her grasp, its chipped rim digging faintly into her fingers. “He asked me about Remus,” she whispered, eyes fixed on a spot just above the grain in the table. “I didn’t even know how to tell him. I froze. Completely. Like a coward.”

“You’re not a coward,” he replied, his tone leaving no room for argument, only certainty. He didn’t say it to console her; he said it because it was true.

Hermione’s laugh came out brittle, like glass on stone. “I still haven’t gone to see Teddy,” she admitted, her voice splintering at the edges. “I couldn’t face him. I told myself I’d wait for the right time. But maybe I’ve just been hiding.”

That, Severus could not fix. He looked at her then, properly, and saw how much she had been holding back. Not just pain, but guilt. Survivor’s guilt. The kind that wormed into the bones and stayed there.

He reached out across the table and rested his hand atop hers. It wasn’t a grand gesture, but it was deliberate. Human. “Go see the boy,” he said. “Not because you owe it to Remus. But because you need to remind yourself that you’re still alive. And so is he.”

Hermione nodded, her gaze still locked on the worn grain of the table as if the whorls and nicks could anchor her in place. Her fingers tightened slightly around the cooling teacup, the motion almost imperceptible but not missed by Severus. The mug had long since ceased to offer any real warmth, but she held onto it anyway, as though reluctant to let go of something that made her feel just a little less hollow.

Severus studied her for a moment longer, his dark eyes unreadable but not unkind. His fingers drummed softly once against the rim of his own cup, and then he spoke—not loudly, not with the clipped precision he was known for, but in a murmur low and raw, as though the words themselves carried too much weight to be spoken at full volume. "You're not the only one who made mistakes."

The confession hovered between them, unadorned and heavy, a thread tugged loose from the tightly wound cloak of silence he usually wrapped around himself. He did not elaborate. He didn’t need to. The shadows beneath his eyes and the line of his jaw said enough.

Outside, the clouds were beginning to shift. Not clearing, exactly. But breaking, just enough for light to find a way in.

It was then that Sirius strode into the kitchen, freshly showered and dressed in dark, well-worn robes, his damp hair pulled loosely at the nape of his neck. There was an unmistakable air of purpose in the way he moved, the kind of grim determination that made Severus think the man looked ready to storm Gringotts and hex every goblin in sight should they offer so much as a raised brow. After yesterday’s raw confessions and shared grief, the two of them had retreated into the study, where the evening had been spent drafting a meticulously worded letter to the wizarding bank. A formal complaint regarding their disgraceful handling of a war hero’s assets and the unceremonious treatment of the woman who now held the Black family fortune.

To prove his identity beyond any doubt, Sirius had pricked his own finger and let a drop of blood fall onto the parchment, sealing it with ancient magic that could not be forged. Neither he nor Severus had expected a swift response; goblins were known for their bureaucracy and disdainful pace. But within two hours of Hermione’s barn owl vanishing into the sky, a terse reply had arrived.

“We do not appreciate threats, Mr Black and Mr Snape,” the letter read, written in precise, runic goblin script. “However, given the significance of both the Black and Prince fortunes to Gringotts' interests, we are willing to arrange a private meeting. You are to present yourselves at the bank tomorrow at noon.”

Sirius had merely snorted when he read it, muttering under his breath about the goblins’ worship of gold above all else. Severus had found himself in rare agreement. But what had truly startled him, what had left him grasping for composure, came afterward. In a moment stripped of arrogance, Sirius turned to him, meeting his gaze without flinching, and delivered an apology that Severus had never imagined hearing. It was not a half-hearted gesture or a vague admission of regret. Sirius took full responsibility for his past cruelty—the mockery, the hexes, the betrayals. There were no excuses. No shifting of blame. Only sincerity, and a quiet vow to do better.

Then, without waiting for a response, Sirius had placed a firm hand on Severus’s knee—a gesture that wavered somewhere between truce and long-overdue solidarity—and stood. He offered a final nod, one that carried a weight of unspoken understanding, before striding from the study with the easy familiarity of someone who had once belonged to the house's bones. Severus had remained behind, staring at the door as if it might give him answers. For several long moments, he simply sat, overwhelmed by the quiet shock of something he had never quite thought himself capable of believing: that Sirius Black, the reckless, arrogant boy he had despised, might genuinely be trying to become someone new.

Now, in the kitchen’s shifting light, Severus found himself watching Sirius again, noting the details that others might overlook. Though the man still held himself like a duellist ready to strike, his eyes betrayed him. They were bloodshot and rimmed with the kind of shadows no potion could banish, the kind that came only from crying through the hours when the rest of the house lay silent. Severus recognised the look—he had worn it too many times himself. Here in Grimmauld Place, silencing charms had become second nature, muttered with the same automatic reflex as breathing. They were not for privacy, not truly, but for mercy—for the sake of those who could not sleep through the sound of old ghosts rising in someone else’s throat.

Sirius passed Severus with a nod that carried neither disdain nor forced civility, just a tired sort of acknowledgement. His hand squeezed Severus’s shoulder briefly, and he muttered a gruff, “Good morning,” which startled Severus more than he cared to admit. Then Sirius leaned down and pressed a kiss to the crown of Hermione’s head as she sat at the table, blinking at the sight of Sirius pressing a kiss to her hair. She sat there next to Severus, absorbing the warmth of the gesture and the quiet gravity of the room, her eyes flickering between Sirius and Severus as if trying to gauge whether the fragile calm would hold. Offering her a faint but genuine smile. It was, Severus realised, the quietest entrance Sirius Black had ever made—and somehow, the most significant. 

"So I talked to Harry last night some more," said Sirius, his voice trailing off slightly as his gaze dropped to the plate in front of him. It wasn’t the words that caught Severus’s attention—it was the way Sirius stared at the toast. The slices, absurd in their precise division—one corner slathered with marmalade, another with jam, a third with butter, and the final with lemon curd—stood out like a strange little ritual, the sort of breakfast that had become synonymous with Remus Lupin. It was ridiculous, yes, but achingly familiar. A quiet tradition the wolf had shared with both Harry and Hermione, and now its presence had reduced Sirius Black—the man who had survived Azkaban, the Veil, and the betrayal of time—to silence.

Severus could see the effort it took for Sirius to remain composed, to not crumble under the weight of memories that tasted of citrus and sugar. The black-haired man cleared his throat and continued, more raggedly this time, "He mentioned that Remus and Tonks had a kid. Teddy."

Hermione’s body went rigid, the muscles in her back tensing as if bracing for a blow. Still, she turned her face to Sirius, meeting his eyes. "Yes. He...he is my godson," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. 

Sirius offered her a sad smile, a fragile thing curling at the corner of his lips. "Yeah, Harry said so. Remus could not have picked better godparents for the little tyke."

A noise escaped Hermione then, something between a breath and a whimper, as if the memories she carried had grown too heavy to remain silent. Severus caught it, and clearly, so did Sirius, whose brow furrowed slightly as he turned his eyes toward Severus. The Potions Master cleared his throat, that old reflex of deflection, and murmured, "Little witch was just telling me how she was planning on seeing the boy." It was a lie—an easy one, sliding off his tongue with the ease of long practice—but necessary. She deserved the illusion of strength, even if it came second-hand. Severus cared more than he dared admit.

Sirius’s face lit up at that, not just bright but incandescent, as if the possibility of connection had reignited something dormant inside him. It was startling, the way joy transformed his face; he looked younger, like the boy from photographs long buried under dust and grief.

"Yeah?" Sirius asked, his voice tinged with something raw and hopeful. Hermione nodded slowly, casting a fleeting glance at Severus, as though seeking silent permission to lean into that hope. "Would it be alright with you both if I... after we've settled the matter with Gringotts and confirmed I'm actually alive... would it be alright if I wrote to Andromeda? To see if she would let me meet Teddy?"

Hermione looked up from her toast then, eyes brimming with unshed tears, her voice trembling but certain. "Oh, Sirius, you do not need permission to write to your cousin or for her to come here and see you."

Severus inclined his head slowly, the gesture small but heavy with meaning. The silence between them was not empty but charged—thick with the weight of everything unspoken yet understood. It was the kind of moment that required no declarations, only the quiet strength of shared acknowledgement. Yes, Sirius belonged here. Yes, they would stand beside him as he pieced himself back together in a world that had broken all of them in different ways. This house, this strange little family stitched from war and survival, had become a sanctuary not in spite of their damage but because of it.

Sirius exhaled as though releasing something long held in his chest. He looked between them—Hermione, with her fierce compassion, and Severus, with his guarded loyalty—and the rough edge of his voice softened. "I... Well, thank you both for everything," he said, and though the words were simple, the way they settled into the room made them feel like something sacred. A promise, perhaps, or a beginning. 

Leaky Cauldron – 2001 – Hermione’s POV

The moment Hermione stumbled out of the Floo into the Leaky Cauldron, the world felt too loud, too bright, too wrong. The sound of footsteps, the buzz of voices, the faint clatter of cutlery and tankards behind the bar—they all pressed in around her like a tide. She blinked hard, eyes adjusting to the flickering candlelight overhead, and took a half-step forward, her boots scraping against the floorboards that felt unsteady beneath her. The scent of roasted meat, firewhisky, and pipe smoke mingled into something too thick, too heavy. It settled at the base of her throat.

Sirius stepped out of the Floo just behind her, brushing soot from the shoulder of his long coat with an air of casualness that belied the sharpness in his eyes. He clocked her hesitation in an instant. Severus emerged next, slower, a flicker of displeasure ghosting across his face at the general grime and noise of the pub. He wheeled himself forward with practiced ease, his cloak draped neatly over his legs, and Hermione could already feel the tension humming between the three of them like a frayed wire.

The Leaky wasn’t busy, not really, but it didn’t need to be. Hermione’s anxiety didn’t need a crowd to bloom. It only needed movement, sound, unpredictability. Her skin prickled beneath her jumper—another of Sirius’s oversized ones, soft from years of wear and comfortingly familiar—and she wrapped her arms tightly across her chest. She’d braced herself for this. She had told herself over and over that she could manage, that she was ready. But already her chest was tightening.

Then she spotted Harry.

He was standing by the corner booth near the alley entrance, arms folded across his chest, his hair windswept and his green eyes watching her with something softer than worry. Relief, perhaps. Or recognition. That look of knowing her too well.

Hermione moved toward him on instinct. Her steps were quick but shallow, as if walking too fast might trip her up entirely. Harry met her halfway, and though they didn’t say a word at first, his hand rose and found her arm in a steadying grip. Not tight. Not possessive. Just present.

“You made it,” he said, a ghost of a smile on his lips.

She nodded, her throat too thick for words. Her heart was racing, a drumbeat behind her ribs that had nothing to do with excitement and everything to do with pressure—external and internal, imagined and remembered.

Behind her, she could hear Sirius attempting to strike up conversation with Tom, voice pitched with false ease as though trying to reclaim an old rhythm. The effort landed hollow. Tom had glanced up sharply, eyes going wide in a way that made Hermione’s stomach twist. Of course he hadn’t expected to see Sirius Black—not in this lifetime. After all, the man had been buried in memory and myth for over half a decade. The barkeep’s face paled slightly before he managed a brittle nod, his hands continuing their task of polishing the same glass with mechanical diligence. He said nothing. Whatever words he might have summoned were swallowed by disbelief. Sirius held his smile a moment too long before it faded at the edges, and he dropped his gaze with a small sigh, brushing a hand through his hair as he turned away. His eyes found Hermione’s across the room, but there was nothing playful in them now—only a kind of muted resignation. Severus, meanwhile, had already turned his chair toward the back door, his nod clipped and his face unreadable. Hermione lingered beside Harry for a heartbeat longer, letting the weight of his hand on her sleeve anchor her before the storm of memories could unmoor her completely.

“I hate this,” she whispered eventually, voice barely audible beneath the hum of the pub. “Not the place. The... being seen.”

Harry’s eyes softened with a flicker of understanding. “Then let’s not linger. We’ll be in and out. I promise. Just you, me, and them.”

Hermione closed her eyes for a heartbeat before exhaling slowly, like each breath needed to be coaxed out with effort. The air in her lungs tasted too dry, too heavy, like dust stirred from corners she hadn’t dared to look at in years. Her fingers clutched tighter at the hem of her jumper, the motion unconscious, as if it might hold her together. She nodded once, her throat tight. “Okay.”

With that, they turned and approached the entrance to Diagon Alley. Behind her, Sirius had fallen quiet, but she felt his gaze on her back. It wasn’t intrusive. Just watchful. Protective, perhaps. And Severus, ever pragmatic, waited by the magical barrier, his eyes narrowed as if he were daring the bricks not to open quickly enough.

The moment the wall slid aside, revealing the cobbled lane beyond, Hermione’s breath caught.

Even after all these years, Diagon Alley still shimmered with magic that clung to the air like perfume. Colours too vibrant, signs that changed as you looked at them, shopfronts bursting with movement and noise. And yet, for Hermione, it had stopped being wondrous long ago. It was too much all at once—too fast, too close, too loud. She clenched her jaw and stepped through the archway, flanked by two of the most complicated men she had ever known, and felt like she might shatter before they even reached Gringotts.

The street wasn’t overly crowded, but it might as well have been for how her body responded—shoulders drawn tight, breath shallow and quick, her fingers twitching against her coat. She could hear Severus and Sirius exchanging sharp words behind her, something about the meeting time or goblin protocol, but it barely registered. The war drum of her pulse drowned out everything else.

Each step was a battle. Each sound was a threat. Each brush of a stranger’s cloak against her arm made her want to retreat into herself, to fold inward and vanish. But she didn’t. Because she had things to do. A bank to face. A life to rebuild.

Sirius Black and Severus Snape flanked her like living shadows, one radiating barely restrained chaos, the other cloaked in brittle detachment. They did not speak, but their presence coiled tightly around her—Sirius’s warmth like an ember flickering close and Severus’s silence as cutting as a drawn blade. Each step they took together felt like threading a needle through the fractured remains of her sanity.

Harry, ahead of her, glanced over his shoulder with that familiar intensity, his eyes steady, his shoulders squared with the quiet weight of someone who had seen her come undone and still believed she would stand again. He looked at her not like a girl still flinching from ghosts, but like a woman made of ash and iron who had the strength to walk forward even when it hurt. And in that look, she found the smallest spark of courage—the kind that didn’t roar or shine, but smouldered quietly in the dark, refusing to go out.

She caught sight of their reflections in a dusty shop window—three figures moving through time and memory like spectres. Sirius, taller, walking slightly ahead, his eyes scanning their path with calculated vigilance. Severus beside her, moving smoothly in his chair, jaw tight. Herself, hunched and pale and too small inside this oversized jumper that used to belong to a dead man.

Only he wasn’t dead. He was here, striding the street like he'd never left it, leather coat flaring in the wind like a banner. And that, more than anything, unsteadied her. She had brought him back, but the reality of him—alive, flesh and blood, walking beside her—was harder to hold than the grief had ever been.

Someone bumped her shoulder—a young witch in navy robes, chattering to her friend—and Hermione flinched hard enough to draw a look from Severus. She didn’t speak, just offered the smallest shake of her head and pressed forward.

She remembered coming here just after the war, hands still trembling from casting the final protective wards around Hogwarts. The Alley had felt like a battlefield then, too—half the shops shuttered, the cobbles stained, the air thick with ash and uncertainty. She remembered holding her wand too tightly and not knowing what to do with her hands when she wasn’t casting.

Now, her hands were still shaking, only this time from a different kind of exhaustion. A quieter kind of terror.

Severus muttered something sardonic under his breath about goblins and their infernal obsession with timetables, but to Hermione, his voice barely registered. It became part of the dull, relentless pressure pressing against her temples—just more noise she couldn’t sort through.

The sun glinted harshly off the polished white marble of Gringotts, making her squint against the glare. Each step had pulled more from her reserves than she was willing to admit, and now, at the base of the broad stone stairs, she felt like her legs were carved from iron. One trembling hand clutched the iron railing, the chill of it biting into her skin. Her lungs rebelled with shallow, stuttering breaths, each inhalation scraping like sandpaper. Her vision narrowed at the edges, the world pulsing faintly with the beat of her blood.

Her pulse roared louder than anything else—drowning out the bustle of the Alley, the creak of Severus’s chair wheels, even the soft murmurs from Harry. All she could feel was the war happening inside her: mind screaming in warning, body locking down as if she were facing down Bellatrix again, as if the echo of remembered pain was enough to conjure it anew.

Sirius had turned just in time to catch the tremor that broke through her composure. He stilled, all trace of humour vanishing from his face. The lines around his mouth tightened. He moved slowly, deliberately, coming to stand in front of her and lifting both hands to cradle her cheeks. His palms were warm against her skin, grounding in a way she hadn’t expected.

“We’re going to walk in together,” he murmured, eyes never leaving hers. “Severus, Harry, and I—we won’t let anything happen to you, little love.”

Something about the phrase—his use of Severus’s full name, his calm certainty, that tender endearment—punched through her panic like sunlight through mist. A broken laugh caught in her throat. It was raw and watery and laced with disbelief. “You don’t even have a wand, Sirius,” she whispered, attempting levity, though her voice cracked halfway through.

Sirius smirked faintly, but his gaze stayed steady. “All the more impressive that I’ve mastered wandless magic, then,” he replied, bending to press a kiss to her temple. As he slid his arm over her shoulders and began to guide her forward, she let herself lean into him just enough to borrow some of his steadiness.

Behind them, Harry fell into step beside Severus, who had already adjusted his chair’s path to follow. Together, they ascended the marble stairs—four souls stitched together by memory, grief, and stubborn resilience—toward the doors of Gringotts Bank. 

The moment the doors to Gringotts swung open, the world changed. The interior air felt colder, older, heavier, as though every breath came with the weight of centuries. High above, the chandeliers flickered with blue-white flames, their icelike light casting sharp, unforgiving shadows along the marble. Beneath her boots, the floors gleamed with impossible polish, reflecting distorted echoes of herself and the men beside her. Hermione’s heart skipped in her chest. She had walked into this bank before, once in disguise, wand in hand, ready for war. This time, she walked in not as a soldier, but as a titled woman. A Lady. A criminal. An inheritor. A contradiction.

Her every footstep felt too loud. Every set of goblin eyes lifted, some with barely concealed distaste, others with open hostility. She heard it before it was spoken—the name that followed her like a curse: Granger. The thief. The girl who unleashed a dragon. The witch who desecrated sacred vaults. No number of polished shoes or soft jumpers would ever erase that from their ledgers.

Sirius moved beside her like he had been born for this corridor. Despite his years in Azkaban and the veil beyond, he wore his heritage like a second skin. His coat flared with purpose, his chin lifted with a regal tilt, and every step he took down the central aisle of the bank said I belong here . Hermione wondered if that was the magic of a Black, that pureblood arrogance polished into a weapon, sharpened through pain and pride.

Severus rolled beside them in calm silence, his eyes as precise as a scalpel. He was watching the goblins, the ledgers, the staff, the guards, counting angles, estimating threats, calculating responses. If Sirius was flair and fire, Severus was surgical control. The two of them together made a shield of sorts, one Hermione didn’t know she needed until she was already within it.

At the centre of the hall stood the lead banking desk, flanked by two guards and a clerk already scribbling notes. The goblin behind the main podium didn’t rise. His eyes narrowed as they approached, flicking from Hermione to Sirius, and then settling coldly on Severus before returning to Hermione once more.

“Miss Granger,” the goblin sneered, his expression carved in disdain so palpable it seemed to curdle the very air around him. He didn’t rise from his post; instead, he surveyed her from beneath heavy lids, as though the act of acknowledging her presence was a personal affront. His voice, dry and sharp as broken glass, echoed slightly against the high stone walls. “Your presence here is neither expected nor welcomed. Some of us remember the events of 1998 quite clearly—and the chaos you left in your wake.”

Hermione froze where she stood, the chill of the bank’s polished floor seeping into her bones. The words, though expected, still hit with force. A dull throb began behind her eyes as the weight of memory surged forward—dragons, vaults, ash in her mouth. She didn’t move, didn’t glance at Sirius or Severus. Her gaze met the goblin’s with steady defiance, but her hands clenched where they hung at her sides, nails digging crescents into her palms.

Sirius took a single step forward, his coat whispering as it shifted around him, a warning in motion. His voice, when it came, was low and honed, as if every syllable had been sharpened in the quiet fury of grief and duty. “She is Lady Black, recognised by inheritance magic and upheld by wizarding law. If there is issue, it lies with your records, not her title.”

The goblin’s eyes dropped to the ring encircling Hermione’s finger, Black family silver, unmistakable in its ancient etching, heavy with old magic and older prejudice. He stared at it for a long, loaded beat before lifting his gaze back to Sirius. The sight of the noble Black crest, worn not by a scion of pure blood, but by a Muggle-born witch, seemed to curdle something behind his pointed features. Sirius had pressed it into her palm that morning without flourish, but the gesture had been deliberate. It had meant something. And now it meant everything. The weight of it on her hand was like a brand in this space, not just a symbol of power but of defiance.

The goblin’s nostrils flared, his expression settling into a contemptuous sneer. “Titles may pass by law, but debts remain. Desecrations remain. She may wear your house’s silver, but she is still a thief, and this bank has not forgotten.”

Hermione’s breath hitched, but she forced her voice to hold steady. It didn’t come out smooth—there was a rasp clinging to it, the edge of strain—but it didn’t falter. “We have a scheduled appointment to review the Black inheritance and vault access.”

“A matter complicated by the fact that Mr Black is, by all official records, deceased,” the goblin retorted coolly, lifting one long, clawed finger to tap against a thick ledger spread open on the desk. “There is no existing protocol for reinstating a dead man’s vault into his possession.”

Sirius’s reply was immediate and calm, a blade sheathed in velvet. “Then perhaps it’s time one was created. You’ll find I’m not as dead as you believed. The magic on this ring will verify my identity.”

As if summoned, the ring on his finger pulsed with faint silver light. It shimmered with the authority of old magic, the kind even goblins could not dispute. A stillness passed through the hall like a held breath. Several clerks paused mid-quill. A guard’s eyes narrowed and his hand edged closer to the hilt of his staff.

The goblin’s upper lip twisted in a sneer so venomous it seemed to taint the very air between them. His slitted eyes gleamed with age-old contempt, narrowing to cruel slivers as he jabbed his chin in Hermione’s direction. “She is still not welcome here. The vault-defiler. The wand-wielding blight who shattered sacred wards and released a beast of fire upon our halls. We remember her insolence. Her blood may not carry stain in your world, but here, we see it clearly. Tainted. Audacious. Unrepentant. No borrowed title can cleanse the scar she carved into our ledgers.”

The soft groan of Severus’s chair cut through the tension like a blade sliding free of its sheath. He leaned forward, the motion slow and deliberate, and when he spoke, the steel in his voice rang clear beneath the marble arches. “You will not address her in such terms again.”

His voice held no hint of temper, no raised pitch—only the chilling calm of someone who had long ago mastered the art of lethal restraint. Each syllable landed with the quiet intensity of a blade honed on truth and purpose. The air around them shifted, thickening like a fog of unspoken defiance. Hermione felt the force of it move between them, not as affection, but as a vow—silent, steel-bound, unwavering. It was protection forged not in sentiment but in shared understanding, offered not as a favour, but as a right.

Her heart ached in her chest, every beat pulsing louder than the clink of quills and the scratch of ledgers. The blood had drained from her face, yet she didn’t falter. She opened her mouth to speak, to reclaim her voice, but Sirius stepped forward, gaze cutting through the frost-laced air.

“All that may as be,” he said, voice rich with ancient defiance, “but she is still Lady Black. Chosen by Harry Potter, sealed by the rites you just witnessed. That inheritance magic is older than your ledgers. It doesn’t lie. Whether or not you stomach it is immaterial. She holds the title. She holds the vault. And for that, you will address her with the respect due.”

The goblin did not flinch, but his sneer curled tighter, a contemptuous twitch of old grudges reignited. “Magic may bind her to the name,” he said, each word drawn like a dagger, “but memory does not forgive. Respect is earned, not inherited, Lord Black .”

Hermione inhaled slowly, her lungs tight with the pressure of the past and the weight of standing. Her spine straightened, not in pride, but in defiance born of survival. She met the goblin’s eyes, the tremble in her breath steadied by fury. “Neither do I,” she said, low but resolute. “And I remember the last time I stood here, I was at war. I came ready to fight, because silence wasn’t an option. This time, I come in peace. But I will not apologise for surviving.”

The silence that followed was a living thing—coiling, waiting, judging. Even the chandeliers flickered in hesitation, casting fractured light across the vault-polished floor. The weight of it pressed into their bones, into their breath.

Then, from behind the main desk, another figure emerged—a goblin taller than the rest, silver-streaked hair bound in a clasp etched with ancient banking runes. Raggnork, the name came like an echo of war and wealth. He moved with the slow, measured command of someone who understood that real power never shouted—it simply arrived.

His eyes took in Sirius, paused on the ring, and narrowed. Not in disbelief, but calculation. There was recognition, and buried beneath it, a reluctant nod to the undeniable. He stopped two paces before them and inclined his head—not a bow, not quite, but something ceremonial enough to signal gravity.

"Lord Black," he said, his voice rough with age and stone. "Let us begin by returning you to the land of the living—and then," his eyes turned to Hermione, sharp as a ledger’s edge, "we shall settle Lady Black’s affairs."

A courtesy. A warning. Power might be acknowledged, but acceptance was an altogether different beast.

Hermione followed in silence as Raggnork turned, his robes sweeping behind him with the deliberate grace of someone who had made ceremony his art. The hallway that led deeper into Gringotts was dimmer than the great hall, lit by cold sconces flickering against stone walls etched in goblin script. The sound of footsteps echoed sharply, unnervingly precise, and with each step, Hermione’s pulse thudded against her ears in rhythmic defiance.

The private negotiation rooms were far from the main hall—buried deep beneath the façade of hospitality, where real power brokered in ledgers and bloodlines. She had only been this far once before, and that had ended in fire, a dying vault, and freedom bought with a dragon’s fury.

Sirius walked ahead now, matching Raggnork’s measured pace, shoulders back, every step infused with a silent dare: Try to deny me . Even Severus, moving at her side, seemed carved from steadiness, his expression unreadable but gaze always calculating. Hermione, however, felt every breath grow tighter, her body responding to the weight of stone and scrutiny like prey trapped in a cavernous snare.

When they reached the appointed chamber, Raggnork opened the door without ceremony and motioned them in with the curt precision of someone who measured power in silence. The room exuded a cold, calculated grandeur—its dark wood table gleamed with an almost unnatural sheen, polished so thoroughly it reflected their distorted shapes like a funereal mirror. The chairs surrounding it were carved from the same wood, set deliberately too low, an architectural insult masquerading as civility. Every element of the room whispered dominance: the sharp angles, the faint scent of ash and aged ink, the chill that seemed to rise from the stone beneath their feet.

High above, a stained-glass window bled fractured light across the chamber, turning their shadows into shards of ruby, sapphire, and sickly green. The air was heavy, not with dust, but with quiet menace. Hermione stepped forward with measured grace, her boots tapping a rhythm that sounded far too loud in the silence. She took her place beside Sirius, her spine held straight not out of comfort, but necessity. Severus rolled into position across from them, every movement refined, intentional, like a duellist surveying the field. Harry remained behind them, shifting his weight slightly, the only one who still moved like he didn’t belong in a room where titles mattered more than names. 

“First,” Raggnork said, “we rectify the record. Lord Black, you were presumed dead by both our records and the Ministry. To reinstate access to your family’s full holdings, we require magical confirmation.”

Sirius held up his hand. The signet flared once—silver light blooming like fire caught in crystal. Old magic, blood-bound, flared through the room, brushing against the edges of every enchanted ward.

Raggnork did not look pleased, but he inclined his head. “Confirmed.”

Hermione let out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding. She hated that it felt like relief.

“Now,” Raggnork continued, turning pages in a thick leather ledger that smelled of age and ash, “Lady Black’s entitlements. As executor of and named head of the Black vaults, she has access to all sealed titles, properties, and objects listed here. We begin with Vault 711—the original Black heir vault—and proceed to Vault 93, which contains…” His lip curled. “Personal effects sealed under Sirius Black’s name.”

Sirius raised an eyebrow. “Let’s start with those.”

Hermione didn’t speak, but her shoulders stiffened. Vault 93 had been locked even to her—untouched, waiting, shrouded in magic only Sirius’s blood could undo. She had read the list of contents, but reading and witnessing were not the same. Still, it was easier to focus on vaults and ledgers than the weight of what came next.

Hermione glanced down at the thick leather ledger laid open before her, eyes tracing the itemised contents with a slow, cautious reverence. "Vault 93," she murmured, her voice catching faintly. "Journals, photographs, a Gryffindor scarf..."

Sirius didn’t look at the list. He leaned over her shoulder, gaze fixed somewhere distant, unfocused. "The scarf was James’s," he said, voice low, almost reluctant. "The gloves were mine. The journals... some are Regulus’s, most are mine. Bits I wrote before Azkaban. When I thought I still had time."

She swallowed around the lump forming in her throat. Her fingers stilled over a line that read mirror—shrouded, location uncertain . "What mirror?"

Sirius exhaled through his nose, a soft, almost bitter sound. "A two-way one. Enchanted back when Regulus and I were still speaking. One half’s here. The other... who knows. Maybe he destroyed it. Maybe he hid it. I couldn’t look into it without hoping for him to answer. So I veiled it."

Harry’s voice was quiet, almost hesitant. "Is that the same mirror? The one you gave me? The one you shared with my dad?"

Sirius hummed, a low sound in his throat. "Yeah, the same. I was the one who created the thing, then broke it. Gave the pieces to James, Remus, Peter, and Reggie. Five corners of a war we never finished."

Harry’s breath hitched, and he looked down so sharply Hermione feared he might be sick. She knew exactly what he was thinking—what she was thinking too. That if he’d opened the gift Sirius had given him in their fifth year, maybe things would have gone differently. Maybe Sirius wouldn’t have died then. Maybe.

Hermione turned the page slowly, the parchment whispering beneath her fingers. "Why keep it all locked away?"

He finally looked at her, a flicker of something old and bruised in his eyes. "Because grief is easier to box up than to bleed through every day. And because I knew one day someone might care enough to ask. Didn’t expect it to be you."

She didn’t respond aloud. But something in her silence felt like an answer. The kind that understood what it meant to keep your ruins behind locks.

Hermione’s gaze moved to the next section of the ledger, where the heading read Vault 711 – Black Heir Holdings . The list beneath was precise and heavy with significance: heirloom wands long disused, ceremonial Black family rings from seven generations, a stasis-locked portrait of Arcturus Black, and several pieces of rare magical armour imbued with protective enchantments—some rumoured to be older than Hogwarts itself. There was mention of a Black family tapestry, preserved from a fire in the 1920s, and a phoenix-feather cloak said to have once belonged to a Black who served in the court of Morgana le Fay.

Further down, Vault 1005 – Black Primary Vault included the broader estate: several thousand Galleons in uncut gem deposits, three dragon-hide trunks sealed with ancestral magic, and a grim inventory of cursed artefacts too dangerous to be stored anywhere else. There was a full inventory of ancestral properties: Black Manor in the Hebrides, the summer house in Southern France, the now-abandoned villa in the Carpathians, and the former duelling estate on the Isle of Skye. Annotations in the margins marked the maintenance status of each—most neglected, some magically sealed.

Below that, listed with formal gravity, were the Black family’s Wizengamot holdings: seven seats in total—two senior seats inherited by bloodline, one minor seat acquired by marriage, and four granted during various wartime alliances stretching back centuries. Each was annotated in the goblin script with status marks: three suspended, two dormant, one disputed, and one ready for immediate claim upon proper registration. A note followed, cool and precise, clarifying that all seats remained unclaimed—awaiting either Sirius Black’s full legal reinstatement or the formal transfer of authority to Lady Black. Hermione stared at the elegant ink with a strange flutter in her chest. The message beneath the bureaucracy was clear: she stood on the precipice of considerable power, and the bank—however grudgingly—was keeping its ledgers open.

And all of it is yours, little love,” whispered Sirius.

Hermione’s head spun. This would not do. She could not take Sirius’s money and inheritance from him. He had earned it. Bled for it. But she knew he would outright refuse if she tried to return it. The bloody stubborn man would swear an oath sealed in blood and magic just to keep her from handing it back. But Hermione was strategic, and far more ruthless than Sirius ever expected. She could outwit him. She looked up at Raggnork.

“If I give orders on transfers, how I want this inheritance to be shared, Sirius cannot overrule my decision?”

Raggnork nodded, though his expression remained unreadable. “Yes, Lady Black. You are the head of the family.”

“Wonderful,” Hermione said smoothly. All three men eyed her now, wary. “I want Vault 711 – Black Heir Holdings to be transferred to Sirius Black III with unlimited access to its contents.”

Sirius started to protest, but she raised her hand and cut him off. “And the Black Manor in the Hebrides—transfer that to his name as well.”

Raggnork began noting the changes, scratching across the parchment as the ledger shimmered and adjusted.

“How much gold is in the primary Black family vault?” Hermione asked.

“Three million Galleons, seven million Sickles, and twice as many Knuts,” Raggnork replied crisply.

Harry let out a low whistle. Sirius looked like someone had hit him with a Bludger. Apparently, even he hadn’t known just how obscenely wealthy the Blacks were.

Hermione nodded. “I want Andromeda Tonks, née Black, her late daughter Nymphadora Lupin née Tonks, and Edward Remus Lupin to be reinstated into the family. Andromeda is to have full access to the Black family vault.”

Raggnork didn’t argue. He snapped his fingers, and a sharp burst of magic rippled through the ledgers.

“I also want a fund and vault established for Edward Remus Lupin,” Hermione continued. “Transfer one hundred thousand Galleons, one million Sickles, and two million Knuts into it. That vault will be called the Black Family Heir’s Vault. He is to be named heir of House Black.”

Sirius was staring at her with the kind of expression that teetered between reverence and disbelief, like he wanted to either fall to his knees and propose or push her against the nearest wall.

“What of the Wizengamot seats?” asked Raggnork, tone clipped.

“Provide me with a list of suitable proxies,” Hermione replied. “Also, I would like the signet ring of the Potter family issued to Lord Harry James Potter.”

She didn’t look to see Harry’s face, but she heard him choke on air.

“And the Prince family signet ring to Lord Severus Tobias Snape,” she added, with a confidence she didn’t entirely feel. Her insides clenched with dread that she might have overstepped.

But Severus only exhaled, long and slow, as though some tightly wound tension had quietly begun to unspool from the edges of his composure. Across from him, Raggnork clenched his jaw in silent displeasure and then cast his sharp gaze first at Harry, then at Severus. Neither wizard spoke. Instead, they answered with matching nods, and without a word, the signet rings shimmered into existence, curling around the pinky fingers of their non-dominant hands. The weight of legacy, ancient and enduring, had been silently accepted.

"Would Lord Potter and Lord Prince like a review of their assets and vaults as well?" Raggnork asked, his voice a sibilant drawl that bordered on disdain.

All three men turned toward Hermione, as if awaiting her verdict, as if she'd become something more than their equal—something like a commander, cloaked not in robes but in resolve. She let out a breathless laugh, not unkind but filled with the weariness of someone who understood too much. "Yes, and thank you," said Harry, voice steady despite the intensity of the moment. Severus added, calm and direct, "I would very much like to know what is contained in the Prince family vault."

The goblin dipped his quill again and scratched it briskly across the parchment. "I will send an owl when your ledgers are ready for review."

Hermione rose, her movements poised and deliberate. She inclined her head toward Raggnork with formal respect. "It has been a pleasure conducting business," she said, and then her voice shifted, taking on a playfully pointed note. "Now, I would like to withdraw one thousand Galleons. You see, I may have pilfered every single one of Lord Black’s t-shirts and leather jackets, and it appears the poor man is in rather desperate need of replacements."

The goblin’s stare lingered on Hermione, his expression twisted into something unreadable—part affronted disdain, part grudging calculation, as though he couldn’t quite decide if she were a clever interloper or a dangerously unpredictable variable in his carefully maintained world of ledgers and bloodlines. Beside her, Sirius broke into a low, wicked laugh, the sound rolling through the marble chamber like smoke and salt and the ghost of youth, echoing off the stone like a feral creature finally loosed from its leash.

“This calls for celebration,” Sirius declared as they exited Raggnork’s office, his voice bright with a kind of reckless glee that Hermione hadn’t seen on his face since before the Veil had claimed him. She might have laughed too, drunk on relief and adrenaline and the surreal fact that she’d just rewritten centuries of inheritance law with a flick of her quill and a fire in her spine. The corridor bled into the marble atrium, the ornate doors yawning open to spill sunlight onto the steps.

And then the world narrowed. Ronald Weasley stood there, red hair unmistakable, eyes wide and stunned—and Hermione stopped breathing. Every nerve in her body locked tight, as if her bones themselves had remembered the last time she’d felt cornered, and all the oxygen vanished from the street in one swift, cruel instant. The giddiness fled. Her heart thudded. And she did not move. 

Diggon Ally - 2001 - Sirius POV

The sunlight outside Gringotts hit Sirius squarely in the eyes, warm and far too bright after the shadowed opulence of the bank’s marble interior. The ancient goblin stone had clung to the chill of vaults and magic older than dynasties, but here, under the pale blue stretch of sky, it was almost possible to pretend they were just people, not survivors balancing grief in their bones. Still, he welcomed the light. His hand remained loosely wrapped around Hermione’s shoulder, a touch more protective than casual, and he felt the way her spine tensed beneath his palm the moment they stepped out. She hadn’t flinched inside—not once. Not when the goblins sneered at her lineage, not even when they questioned her right to wield the power she had claimed. But here, out in the open, with only the breeze and the ghosts of London shifting between cobblestones, she froze. And Sirius, alert even in his half-restored state, noticed everything.

She’d done brilliantly. Sirius was proud of her in a way that ached, a kind of fractured tenderness that sat heavy in his ribs. She had stood her ground like someone twice her age, someone born with legacy stitched into her marrow, not a girl barely out of the war with anxiety clawing at her lungs. He knew the cost. Every breath she took had been measured. Every nod to a goblin, every clipped answer, every time she refused to look afraid—it had been for them. That Severus Snape—snide, sharp, complicated bastard that he was—had stood at her side without so much as a flicker of disdain had been something else entirely. Sirius didn’t like the man, and probably never would. But in the polished, stony quiet of Gringotts, he had seen the way Severus placed himself like a wall beside her, matching each sneer with a sharper rebuke. It made something bitter and reluctant in Sirius’s chest relax. Just a little.

He also knew, with the same bone-deep certainty that once told him when Azkaban’s dementors were closing in, that Harry hadn’t told him everything. Not last night, not in the hesitant, half-strangled recitation over too-sweet tea and treacle tart. And Hermione—his bright, brittle witch—had held back even more. But for the first time in decades, time was something Sirius had. They would get there. He’d learn them again, piece by piece, scar by scar.

That comforting illusion lasted all of five seconds.

Hermione tensed beneath his hand, her posture snapping upright, the line of her jaw hardening like marble. Her breath caught in her throat. Harry, just behind them, muttered something low and bitter. "Fuck."

Sirius followed their gaze, his stomach twisting. Across the street, framed by the shadow of the apothecary doorway, stood a figure he hadn’t thought about in years. Ronald Weasley. Red hair, tall frame, blue eyes flicking between them in disbelief. For a brief moment, Sirius’s memory tripped—summer evenings at Grimmauld, Harry and Ron trading insults over dinner, Hermione reading aloud from the Prophet. The boy had been lanky and loud, a kind of golden retriever with a wand. But that was before. Before the Veil. Before the war carved rifts that time and magic could not heal.

Hermione didn’t move. She was statuesque beneath his hand, and he felt the tremor that ran through her bones. Harry stepped forward, subtly putting himself between her and Ron. Severus rolled up smoothly, silent and pointed, placing one pale hand over hers where it gripped her robe. Sirius understood.

Something had gone wrong. Not just a misunderstanding or the kind of miscommunication time could mend, but a fault line that split clean through the foundations of trust, history, and friendship. Sirius could feel it—like the tension in a room just before a storm hit, the pressure rising, oxygen thinning. He saw the way Harry’s jaw clenched, how Hermione’s entire frame coiled tighter, and the way Severus seemed to brace, his hand tightening over Hermione’s knuckles like a quiet warning.

Ron’s voice cleaved through the delicate silence like the crack of a whip, rough with disbelief and far louder than the moment warranted. It startled even the lingering murmurs of Diagon Alley, drawing glances from nearby shoppers and turning what had been tense stillness into something brittle. There was an almost confrontational edge to his tone, a raw demand for confirmation rather than a simple greeting, and it hung between them like the beginning of a storm. "Harry?"

Everything seemed to pause. The usual bustle of the alley dulled around them, as though the buildings themselves recognised the volatile thread woven between the four of them. Strangers skirted around the moment, instinctively sensing its weight.

Harry didn’t bother to offer even the ghost of a smile. His voice carried a precise, quiet sharpness—like a blade honed not for show but for exacting work. "Hello, Ron," he said, calm on the surface, but his eyes had hardened, no warmth in them.

Ron’s gaze drifted from Harry to the others, scanning with a mix of disbelief and growing tension. When his eyes found Hermione, something flickered—an echo of the past, of something gentler. But it died quickly, curling inward and warping into confusion. "Mione?" he said, his voice uncertain, like he didn’t quite recognise her anymore, like her presence offended his memory of who she should be.

Hermione didn’t withdraw, but her expression changed. It was subtle—just the tightness around her eyes and the faint curl of her lip. Sirius noted it. She hated that nickname.

"Hello, Ronald," she said, and though her voice was composed, every syllable cut like frostbite—sharp, deliberate, and utterly devoid of warmth. Gone was the affection that might once have softened her tone; in its place, there was the polished chill of someone who had rebuilt herself from ashes and chosen exactly who no longer had a place in the life she crafted.

Sirius’s hand firmed gently over her shoulder, not possessive but anchoring, a silent pledge of presence in the midst of rising dread. Next to her, Severus’s long fingers contracted slightly around her own, a tactile reassurance as precise and intentional as any spell he had ever cast.

Ron’s gaze shifted again—darting from Sirius to Severus, his expression morphing from disbelief to something verging on unease. The name slipped out of his mouth not as a question but as a startled exhale, as if speaking it aloud might break whatever surreal illusion he thought he was trapped in. His brow furrowed, lips parting slightly, and he took a small step forward before catching himself. The colour had drained from his freckled face, and he stared at Sirius as if trying to reconcile the ghost of memory with the living, breathing man before him. "Sirius?" he said again, this time more quietly, the word trembling between recognition and denial.

Sirius inclined his head ever so slightly, his posture composed, voice pitched with casual indifference. "Hello, Ron," he said, letting the name land with the weight of memory rather than familiarity.

Ron stared, eyes wide and pale. "You’re... dead," he breathed, his tone scraping somewhere between disbelief and horror, the colour visibly leeching from his freckled face.

"Was," Sirius replied, dry humour coiled tightly around the word. "Apparently death is only mildly inconvenient when you have Hermione Granger fighting to bring you back." His gaze flicked toward her, the corner of his mouth twitching into something that might’ve been pride if it weren’t for the fatigue weighing down the edges.

Ron blinked, his eyes darting between the two of them, struggling to process. The question died in his throat, but Sirius could already read it in his expression: how? Why? At what cost? Hermione stood steady beside him, the war drum of tension reverberating in the still air, her spine rigid and chin lifted as though daring Ron to ask outright.

"Harry moved forward with deliberate control, the edge in his voice sharpened by rising tension. "This is a conversation for another place," he said, eyes fixed on Ron with the kind of restrained intensity that came only from experience in handling volatile situations. His words, though calm, held the weight of finality. "Let’s go to work. We’ll talk there."

But Ron didn’t move. He stood rooted, like a stone in the middle of a rushing current, his expression hardening. The muscles in his jaw twitched as he looked past Harry, gaze snagging on Hermione with something too brittle to be called curiosity. He ignored the invitation to leave, ignored the heat radiating off every body around him, and instead demanded, in a voice both accusing and hollow with disbelief, "How?"

The single word splintered the fragile moment, not just a question but a challenge—one hurled like a gauntlet at their feet. And even though it was just a word, it echoed with all the weight of unspoken years, of broken friendships and the ghosts that never stopped watching.

Hermione lifted her chin. Her voice was steady, but Sirius felt how her body coiled tight beneath his touch. "I worked for two years in the Australian Department of Mysteries. I earned a Mastery in Death Magic. My field was Necromancy and the Manipulation of Life Force. I helped create the ritual."

Sirius stared at her, marveling again at the intellect behind those brown eyes. She delivered it like an academic reading a paper, not a girl who had clawed a man out of death with her own two hands.

"But Sirius wasn’t fully gone," she continued, her voice composed but shadowed by something unspoken. "He was caught in the in-between."

Harry cleared his throat, his tone clipped and absolute. "We need to get going. Sirius has a healer’s appointment. Severus has rehab."

Sirius arched an eyebrow, tilting his head slightly, the corner of his mouth twitching. That was certainly news to him. Then again, considering the weight of the morning, being carted off to a healer sounded significantly more appealing than lingering in Diagon Alley under the scrutiny of fractured friendships and unresolved ghosts.

Ron scoffed, the sound harsh and incredulous. His nose wrinkled in disdain, his lips twisting into something that might have once been familiar—except now it dripped with bitterness. "Severus? What, you're best mates with the dungeon bat now? Swapping cauldron recipes and bedtime stories?"

The words were sharp and flung like knives, clearly intended to provoke. But Sirius only narrowed his eyes slightly, watching Hermione tense again beside him, her hands tightening into fists just out of view. The insult didn’t land the way Ron might’ve hoped—it wasn’t funny, it wasn’t clever. It was desperate. And it reeked of a man who had been left behind by the world reshaping itself without him.

Harry let out a slow, weary breath that seemed to carry the weight of battles fought long after the war had officially ended. His voice, when it came, was low and measured, but rich with layers of meaning. "I’ve lived with him for the last few months," he said, not looking at Ron but past him, as though trying to see a future beyond this brittle moment. "Things change, Ron. People change. And sometimes, that’s the only way any of us survive."

Before Ron could reply, Harry moved with purpose, catching his old friend firmly by the elbow. The gesture wasn’t rough, but it carried a weight of finality that brooked no protest. Ron resisted just enough to make his stubbornness known—his feet didn’t budge, but his head turned over his shoulder. His eyes locked with Hermione’s, and in them bloomed a storm of tangled emotions—hurt, disbelief, a hint of the boy he once was, and something deeper, darker, that couldn’t be named. It was not affection. It was not forgiveness. Whatever lay between them now was too frayed to resemble anything whole.

Sirius felt the tension thrumming through Hermione like a taut string stretched to its breaking point. She didn’t return Ron’s look. She stared past him, past the crowd, past whatever they’d once been, her gaze fixed somewhere he could not follow. His hand on her shoulder remained steady, but he felt the echo of something hollow underneath her stillness. She had held her ground, but this—that look, that name, that voice from her past—had reached places goblins and bureaucrats could not.

Harry leaned in, his mouth brushing Ron’s ear with words too sharp and low to carry. It wasn’t a threat. It was a conclusion. A truth. Whatever it was, Ron’s resistance shattered like glass beneath pressure. His expression flickered—surprise, guilt, maybe shame—before he gave a small, jerky nod and allowed himself to be led away, his footsteps heavy with things left unsaid.

Only when their silhouettes vanished into the alley's turning did Sirius exhale. The breath dragged from him like he’d been underwater, his ribs tight with restraint. Beside him, Hermione stayed unnaturally rigid, her shoulders locked against the world as though bracing for another blow that hadn’t yet fallen.

Severus’s voice emerged from her other side, laced with arid sarcasm, like parchment crisped at the edges. "Well, that went better than expected."

Hermione turned her head slightly, the motion stiff with tension. Her voice rasped out, frayed and brittle like something stretched too thin. "That was better?"

A faint smirk tugged at the corner of Severus’s mouth, more bone-weary than amused. "You didn’t hex him in public," he murmured, arching a brow with tired cynicism. "I call that progress."

Hermione’s chest rose in a stuttered breath, the first she seemed to truly allow herself since they stepped outside the bank. The rigidity in her posture eased by a hair’s breadth, the weight of the encounter catching up to her all at once. Then, unexpectedly, a sound broke free—low and raw, scraped from the depths of her exhaustion. It was laughter, but barely. More of a release, jagged and trembling, forged from weariness and defiance and something too weary to be called relief. It hung in the air like mist after a storm, fragile and defiant in equal measure.

Sirius clapped his hands once, the sound sharp in the quiet, drawing startled glances from both Hermione and Severus. "Sorry," he said, and then with a roguish tilt to his voice, added, If I’m not mistaken and I very rarely am when there’s something in it for me, our little love promised me a new leather jacket. And after the morning we’ve had. I reckon I’ve bloody well earned it.” He turned to Hermione with a grin full of mischief and warmth, eyes glinting like moonlight off polished boots. “Surely you wouldn’t deny your favourite resurrected disaster a well-deserved treat, my darling?” He turned with a theatrical sweep, descending the stairs like a man reclaiming the world one step at a time, entirely missing the look Hermione and Severus exchanged behind his back—one part disbelief, one part something quieter, almost fond, stitched together by exhaustion and everything unspoken between them. 

Chapter Text

Grimmauld Place - 2001 - Sirius & Severus

The house was too quiet.

Sirius Black had endured many silences throughout his life—ones thick with menace behind locked doors, ones hushed with sorrow beneath starless skies, and others pulsing with the raw weight of secrets too heavy to voice. But the silence that filled Grimmauld Place was something altogether different. It was not peaceful, nor oppressive—it was aching. The kind of silence that crept beneath your skin, that coiled in the corners of your mind, whispering incessantly of things gone wrong. There was no music, no laughter, no footsteps echoing up the stairs. The house did not breathe—it merely waited.

It wasn’t that Hermione and Harry stayed home. Sirius understood that. He had done the same after Azkaban, cloaking himself in the walls of this very house like a wounded animal. But this quiet was different. It wasn’t isolation, it was abandonment. Visitors had dwindled to nothing. Not even the warm, chaotic bursts of old friends tumbling through the Floo, or the polite correspondence of Hogwarts acquaintances. Only Lavender and Luna came now, both seemingly handpicked for their resilience and gentleness, bright sparks that dared to step through the gloom.

Sirius noticed. Always had. For all his reckless bravado, Sirius had been born with a hawk’s eye for detail and a wolf’s sensitivity for shifts in energy. He saw the tremble in Hermione’s hands when she thought no one was watching, the way Harry’s gaze lingered too long on the window as though waiting for a storm to come—or perhaps, hoping it would.

He approached the subject the way one might approach a sleeping dragon—with careful humour masking genuine concern. “What happened with Ron?” he had asked Hermione once, his voice deliberately light, his posture casual, even as every fibre of him waited for the answer.

“It’s in the past. Don’t worry about it,” she had replied. The words were brittle. Her back had been to him, but the tension in her shoulders told him more than her mouth ever could. It was a dismissal meant to end the conversation—and she succeeded. But not in easing his worry.

When he asked Harry, he didn’t fare much better. The younger wizard had muttered, “He was an arsehole,” with a finality that cut through the air like a dull blade. There was no heat in his voice—only a bone-deep exhaustion that spoke of wounds still festering beneath the surface, things too painful or complicated to name. The words weren’t just an indictment of Ron, Sirius realised, but a resignation to how much had changed, how much had broken beyond repair. And with that bitter, hollow sentence, the door to understanding had remained shut.

Left with no clear answers and no one else willing to speak them aloud, Sirius found himself drawn—grudgingly, inevitably—to the one person who might still hold some truth in his hands: Severus Snape.

The irony of it didn’t escape him. That he—a Gryffindor through and through, once the bane of Severus’s existence—would turn to the former Potions Master for insight into the hearts of those he loved. But desperate times, and all that. He had stood outside Severus’s door for a moment, hand raised but not knocking, cursing the universe that this was the only man left with answers.

Sirius lingered in front of Severus’s door for longer than he cared to admit, fingers hovering just shy of the wood, as if the knock itself required more courage than anything he had faced in battle. The silence of Grimmauld had pressed heavily on him all morning—unsettling, expectant, and hollow—and it had driven him here, to this improbable threshold. With a muttered curse under his breath, he finally raised his hand and knocked.

From within came the familiar drawl, tired but sharp as ever. “Enter.”

Pushing the door open, Sirius leaned in just far enough to meet the stare already waiting for him. Severus was reclined on the bed, book in hand, the very image of someone annoyed but not surprised. At the sight of Sirius, he sighed—a long, deliberate sound that carried a wealth of disdain.

Sirius felt the old irritation rise in his throat, but he forced it back down, swallowing it like bitter tonic. “I need to talk,” he said, his voice roughened more by vulnerability than by pride. “Can I come in?”

Severus gave him a slow, assessing look, the kind that felt like it stripped flesh from bone, before lifting a single dark brow in resigned invitation. He gestured with a half-tilt of his head and muttered, “You may. What is it now, Mut?”

The nickname, as always, made Sirius snort, though this time he swallowed the urge to retaliate. He stepped further into the room, casting a glance around as if searching for a foothold in the unfamiliar quiet between them. Rather than settle into the expected armchair, Sirius made his way toward Severus’s wheelchair, eyeing it with a touch of mischief before unceremoniously dropping himself into it. It gave a light creak beneath him, and Severus’s eyebrow lifted with silent disapproval, but he said nothing, simply turned a page in his book with exaggerated calm.

Sirius spun slightly, letting the wheels shift him gently in place. His hands gripped the metal rims, fingers twitching as if needing to be occupied. With a faint grunt, he pushed himself into a slow circle, the movement rhythmic and almost meditative in its way. Severus, unmoved, continued reading. The rasp of paper seemed to grow louder with each pass of the wheel.

As the minutes passed, Sirius grew increasingly restless, the movement of the chair turning jittery rather than smooth. The silence between them was no longer thick but taut—straining under the weight of whatever unspoken thing he’d brought into the room. His leg began to bounce in quick succession, and he huffed, pushing himself to spin again.

Snape’s voice broke the weighty quiet with his usual dry sharpness, his thumb gliding over the edge of the page before turning it. “You do realise conversations require actual words, don’t you?” 

Sirius halted his restless circling, the wheels of the chair coming to an uneven stop as he planted both feet flat to the floor. For a few long moments, he simply sat there, hunched forward slightly, elbows braced on his knees, gaze fixed on the worn floorboards beneath his borrowed seat. The silence between them pressed inward, not hostile, but oddly expectant. Sirius’s mind—always a tempest—was struggling to form coherent thoughts, and instead latched onto the one detail that had struck him the moment he entered the room.

Severus Snape looked… good. Not in the way Sirius remembered—thin-lipped and sharp-eyed, always shadowed and scowling—but in a way that startled him. His hair, once an oily curtain, now hung clean and smooth around his face. His skin, though still pale, held something closer to health. And then, just as that uncomfortable thought found a home, Sirius looked up and saw the most unsettling sight of all: Snape was smiling.

That did it. Sirius, without thinking, blurred the first thing that leapt to his mind—inelegant, unfiltered, utterly idiotic. "When did you start washing your hair?" 

The moment the question left his mouth, he wanted to claw it back. But there it was, hanging awkwardly between them like a bat flapping wildly in the daylight. 

To his surprise, Severus let out a low, brittle chuckle, the sound unexpected but not entirely unfriendly. “I always did. Unfortunately, my parents couldn’t afford decent products, and it did what poverty always does—it left a mark.” 

Sirius blinked, caught somewhere between shame and curiosity. “Oh,” he muttered, feeling more like an eleven-year-old in too-large robes than a grown man just back from the brink of death. 

Looking up over the rim of his book, Severus narrowed his eyes, the glint behind them landing somewhere between amusement and challenge. His voice, low and deliberate, sliced through the quiet with surgical precision. “Am I making you nervous, Mut?” 

Sirius groaned, dragging both hands down the length of his face in a motion that was half theatre, half desperation. The truth clung to him like smoke, thick and undeniable. “Yes,” he said with a muffled voice, palms still pressed to his cheeks. “Merlin help me, yes.” 

A ghost of a smirk tugged at Severus’s lips, not quite cruel, but unmistakably pleased. The way he closed his book was deliberate, a slow and deliberate gesture that marked the end of indulgence and the beginning of interest. “Well,” he murmured, voice silken and wry, “that’s something, at least.”

Sirius shifted forward in the chair, his elbows braced against his knees, palms curled inwards like he was trying to wrestle the question into something manageable. He stared down at the space between his boots for a long moment, brows drawn, before finally lifting his gaze. His voice was quieter than usual—less like a bark, more like a confession. “I need to ask you something. About Hermione and Harry.”

That drew Severus’s attention in full. He straightened, setting his book aside with the precision of someone who knew the next few minutes would not be casual. His expression gave nothing away, but the alert stillness in his posture spoke volumes. He didn’t respond immediately, just waited—an invitation for Sirius to continue, if he dared.

Sirius exhaled through his nose and leaned back, suddenly feeling far older than his body had any right to feel after such a short return to life. “What happened with Ron? And the rest of the Weasleys? Why is it so bloody quiet around them?”

Severus drew in a slow breath, then released it with the air of a man resigned to saying what should have been said long ago. “ I wish they would speak to you about it. They think they’re doing what’s best. Protecting you, perhaps. Or more likely, protecting themselves from what you might learn.”

Sirius frowned, jaw tightening. “I don’t need their protection. I need the truth. I need to understand.”

There was a long pause before Snape nodded. “George still sees Harry sometimes. They meet quietly, away from here. He’s tried with Hermione too, but she won’t respond. She’s cut them off. As for Ron, something broke. I don’t know what, but whatever it was, it snapped violently. Ginny… well. Ginny didn’t take kindly to Harry choosing Hermione—and by extension, you—over her. It wasn’t a romantic choice, but it was a choice nonetheless.”

Sirius sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. The explanation was a map without directions—he knew more, but still felt lost.

“Lavender and Luna,” Snape added after a pause, “are the only ones who visit. The only ones she lets in.”

Before Sirius could shape his next question, a shrill, bone-rattling shriek shattered the fragile calm of the house. The sound sliced through the stillness with such sudden ferocity that Sirius stiffened mid-motion, breath caught in his throat. Across the room, Severus’s head snapped upward, the muscles in his neck tight with recognition and dread.

There was no mistaking that voice—shrieking, furious, and viciously familiar. Molly Weasley, in full wrath, filled the air with a sound that struck like a whip crack through stone.

Sirius didn’t hesitate. He surged to the bed, ignoring Severus’s instinctive flinch as he swiftly gathered him in his arms. The Potions Master let out a startled curse, but Sirius had already manoeuvred him into the waiting wheelchair, movements brisk with urgency rather than gentleness. Without waiting for protest, Sirius gripped the handles and wheeled them both swiftly toward the escalating chaos.

The kitchen doorway was a threshold to hell.

The air vibrated with fury. A dozen, no—more—red Howlers spun violently in the air, their mouths torn open in jagged, pulsing ovals, spewing vitriol like acid rain. The sound was unbearable—insults overlapping, curses shrieking over one another, all aimed at a single trembling figure caught in the centre of the storm.

Hermione stood rigid, as if her spine alone held her upright. Her face was bloodless, eyes wide, and unfocused like she was struggling to stay grounded in the present. Her fingers twitched at her sides, muscles locked in what looked like an agonised refusal to run.

Sirius didn’t wait for permission or a plan. His wand was in his hand before thought fully formed. He swept it in a broad arc, and half the Howlers ignited in searing flame. Severus joined in instantly, wand flicking with precise economy, annihilating the rest in bursts of blue fire. The air filled with smoke and ash, the scent sharp with burnt magic and singed parchment.

And then—silence. Abrupt, unnatural. A silence that rang louder than the screams had. The flames curled upward and vanished, leaving nothing but scorched corners and that awful, acrid smell. Hermione hadn’t moved. Her chest rose in shallow jerks, and her lips parted slightly, but no sound came.

Her legs buckled.

Sirius crossed the space in two strides and caught her, wrapping his arms around her with more instinct than grace. Her weight sagged against him, not unconscious, but lost—adrift in the wreckage of rage she had not deserved.

He held her close, one hand pressed firmly between her shoulder blades while the other anchored her waist. He didn’t offer her empty platitudes or murmur gentle reassurances. He simply grounded her, body and presence a firm and unshakable weight against the chaos that had just erupted around her. It wasn’t about words. It was about steadiness. About being a point of contact in a world that had just tried to rend her limb from limb.

“I am going to murder the harpy,” Snape snarled, fury flaring in his voice as he moved quickly to Hermione’s side. She was trembling, her knees wobbling as though her legs could no longer support her. Sirius helped ease her toward the chair, but before she could sit, a soft whimper broke from her chest. She didn’t speak, but her eyes turned toward Severus, wide and aching.

Severus met her gaze and didn’t hesitate. He simply opened his arms, no need for words between them. Understanding passed like current between their bodies. Sirius tightened his grip on her hand as she climbed into Severus’s lap with a sort of desperate grace, curling herself into his chest. She didn’t release Sirius, not even for a moment, clutching his hand as Severus wrapped his arms protectively around her.

Sirius moved behind the chair with deliberate care and guided them gently to the table. The weight of the moment clung to them, heavy and relentless. As he took a seat beside them, he reached with his free hand, summoning the soft black leather jacket that had become a talisman of comfort. He draped it gently over Hermione’s shoulders and began rubbing slow, steady circles along her back. Opposite him, Severus’s fingers moved in soothing motions against her lower spine and hips, grounding her further in the here and now.

Hermione’s voice, when it came, was raw—threaded with the sort of grief that had no edges, no end. "I just wish they would let me go. That’s..." The rest of her thought caught in her throat. She turned her face inward and buried it deeper into Severus’s shirt, as if the cotton alone might hold her together. Her words resumed, halting and broken. "That’s why I cut George off. He’s always been kind. My friend. But when I was in Australia, he told me he was fighting with his family for staying in touch with me. Percy said something similar. And I—I felt so guilty. I didn’t want to be the cause of another fight, another crack in their home. So I ended it. I stopped replying. I just wanted peace. I just wanted it to end."

Across her hunched back, Sirius and Severus shared a look—more than a glance, less than a conversation. Sirius leaned in, his voice a quiet thing now, as if the walls themselves needed to be kept at bay. "It’s alright, little love. I know this hurts, and I know you’d rather not pull it all up again. But for Severus and me to understand why Molly sent those letters… you need to tell us."

Hermione’s head shifted, just enough for her voice to carry through the fold of Severus’s shirt. "I don’t want to burden you."

Severus’s reply was immediate, steady as his grip. "You’re not. You’ve given so much to us, Hermione. Maybe it’s time we give something back. Let us hold some of it now." He met Sirius’s eyes briefly, the unspoken accord between them tightening. Sirius nodded and adjusted his hand, fingers gliding from the ridge of her spine to the nape of her neck. The motion was gentle, grounding. His thumb moved in slow lines from shoulder blade to scalp, and she gave a soft hum that trembled on the edge of a sigh before melting deeper into the touch.

She spoke then—quieter than before—so soft they both leaned in to hear. "Ron and I… kissed during the final battle. And after, we tried to be something. Six months, maybe. It’s hard to say. Everything blurred after the war. Like Harry, Ron struggled. They drank too much. All the time. Harry became… clingy, affectionate, sweet in that way only he can be. Ron was… angry. Always. He’d lash out without reason. Snap at me. And even though he didn’t say it at first, I could feel it—Ron blamed me for Fred."

Silence gripped the room. The air stilled, like the world held its breath.

Snape’s voice, when it came, was hushed and laced with disbelief. "He blamed you for his brother’s death?"

Even Sirius, who rarely found himself speechless, could only blink.

Hermione nodded, the motion small, almost imperceptible. Sirius might have missed it, had he not been watching the way her curls shifted with the movement. He glanced to Severus and saw the mirrored fury etched across the man’s face. It was a terrible thing, realising how swiftly both of them were willing to commit bloody vengeance for her sake.

But Hermione continued. "He said it one night, drunk out of his mind. He snarled it at me, like it was a truth he’d been swallowing. I was with Fred when the wall collapsed. Dolohov had cast a bombarda—ricocheted off my shield. Hit the left wall. Fred and Percy were there. Laughing. And then… Fred was gone. I killed Dolohov seconds later. He landed on the spike of some statue. I didn’t think. I just—"

“Fred’s death wasn’t your fault, Hermione.”

The words came from the kitchen doorway, carrying the weight of grief and a stubborn kind of love. Not one of them had heard footsteps. Not one had noticed the presence until that voice, hoarse but steady, broke the air around them. All three turned, their exhaustion giving way to startled recognition.

George Weasley stood at the threshold. His eyes were hollow but burning with quiet fury, his mouth set in a line that trembled despite his effort to stay composed. There was something jagged in the way he held himself—like a man half-rebuilt after ruin. Just behind him stood Harry, and the sight of him nearly broke Sirius. The boy looked like hell. Eyes rimmed red, his arms full of those same cursed envelopes, the weight of them digging into his skin like penance.

Hermione made a soft, broken noise. It was neither a sob nor a word, but something in between—raw and aching. Then, breathlessly, she choked out, “Georgie.” The name fractured in the centre as if it hurt to say. There was no time to stop her. No time to cushion the collapse. She surged forward and then fell apart, body wracked with sobs that she couldn’t hold in any longer. She folded into Severus, burying her face into his neck as if she might disappear there, and all Sirius could do was tighten his grip, holding her like a lifeline.

Grimmauld Place - 2001 - Hermione

Hermione’s world had narrowed to the echo of her own heartbeat and the warmth of Severus’s arms when the sound of George’s voice shattered the fragile hush. As if waking from a thick, shrouded dream, her senses flared in sharp overload—every detail too vivid, too loud. The kitchen reeked of scorched parchment and acrid ink, the remnants of dozens of howlers still thick in the air, clawing down her throat like smoke. Her skin buzzed with the lingering ghost of adrenaline, the tremble of recent terror trapped in her fingertips. One hand was still fisted in the dark sleeve of Severus’s shirt, the other clasped tightly in Sirius’s, her nails half-mooned into his knuckles. There was nowhere to hide from the moment.

Her eyes adjusted sluggishly, the shapes in the doorway resolving into Harry and George, framed by morning light that felt almost violent in its brightness. Her boys. Her heart clenched around the sight of them. Family—tattered, complicated, unfinished—but still, somehow, hers. Harry stood as though a gust of wind could knock him over, arms brimming with blood-red envelopes, his eyes rimmed and swollen like he hadn’t slept in days. He looked gaunt, half-hollowed out, and beside him, George mirrored the same weight. His freckles stood out stark against a pallor Hermione didn’t remember ever seeing on him, worry etched deep across his face.

She couldn’t look at the howlers again. The very shape of them in Harry’s hands made her stomach twist. Guilt crawled up her ribs and lodged behind her sternum, a familiar sharpness she had no breath left to dull.

She felt Sirius shift, the heat of his body pressed to her side just a second longer before she let go. Her fingers uncurled from his with a reluctant tremble, a silent acknowledgement passing between them. Go to him.

Sirius didn’t hesitate. He leaned in first, the rasp of his breath warm against her cheek. “Everything will be alright, my little love,” he whispered, so quiet it was only for her. His lips pressed to her temple, slow and sure, grounding her in a way that startled her with its tenderness.

Severus’s arm tightened around her waist as Sirius pulled away. The Slytherin said nothing—he didn’t need to. Instead, he tilted toward her, lips brushing her other temple in a gesture so uncharacteristically soft that her eyes stung with fresh tears. Reverent. Wordless. Enough.

Sirius moved across the kitchen, his stride more steady than she expected from a man only just returned to the world, and Hermione watched him through a film of salt. He crossed the space with purpose and wrapped Harry in a fierce embrace, arms folding around his godson with an ache that radiated even across the room. The howlers slipped from Harry’s arms like leaves in autumn, crumpling to the stone floor with muffled thumps. Harry didn’t speak—just buried his face in Sirius’s shoulder, and for a moment, he looked like a boy again. Lost, small, and held tight.

Sirius didn’t stop there. With one arm still wrapped around Harry, he reached out and pulled George into the fold. George went willingly, his long frame folding into Sirius’s without protest. His shoulders shook, not violently, but enough to show the cracks beneath the jokes and sarcasm.

“It was bad,” George said after a moment, his voice hoarse and eyes darting to Hermione as though to gauge how much truth she could handle. “He came into the shop today. Didn’t say a word. Just walked behind the counter and fell apart. I hadn’t seen him cry since Fred and Remus…” George’s throat bobbed. “Then I saw the letters. Mum sent them to the Ministry. Sent them to my flat, too. One of them nearly blew the bloody window out.”

Hermione flinched at the image, at the reminder of how far Molly had fallen from the woman who once knit her jumpers and saved her from school detentions. She couldn’t imagine that voice shrieking into Harry’s office, couldn’t stand to picture her words folded in red paper like knives.

George exhaled shakily, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I couldn’t let him come alone after that. He needed…someone.”

Hermione still hadn’t found her voice. Her mouth tasted like copper, her throat too tight for speech. Instead, she shifted slightly and reached across her lap to find Severus’s hand, threading her fingers through his and squeezing as though he was the only thing keeping her grounded. He didn’t flinch or pull away. He simply let her hold on.

She felt raw. Hollowed out by too much noise and not enough healing. But beneath the ache and anxiety and the whisper of Molly’s voice still ringing in her ears, something else stirred. Something she hadn’t dared believe in for a long while.

Hope. Small. Sharp. Real.

Family had come back for them—and this time, they weren’t going to let go.

Severus leaned in, his voice barely more than a breath against her ear. "Go. They need you as much as you need them, little witch."

Hermione’s breath stuttered in her throat. It was startling how gently those words settled inside her, like something fragile being placed carefully on a shelf. When had Severus become this version of himself with her—quietly present, unexpectedly kind? Then again, over the past few months in Grimmauld Place, it had always been there, in the small ways. In the way he handed her tea, in how he kept watch when her hands trembled. She looked up and found his eyes waiting, dark and still and almost luminous in the soft kitchen light.

She didn’t think. Her fingers moved on instinct, brushing across the sharp angle of his jaw, cupping his cheek with the tenderness of someone who had finally stopped running from her grief. She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his lips, soft and brief and full of everything she didn’t have words for. “Thank you,” she whispered into the space between them.

Then she rose, her legs stiff and reluctant, and stepped from his lap. Hermione found just enough strength to draw her spine straight, to breathe past the smoke still clawing at her throat, and to take one more step forward into whatever came next. Sirius nudged both Harry and George gently, guiding them closer, and Hermione reached out without hesitation. She wrapped her arms around them both, burying her face between shoulders that had once carried her through war and would now, somehow, carry her through this too.

Hermione caught a flicker of movement in her periphery—Sirius stepping away from the reunited trio and making his way back across the room. His gait, still touched with the echo of recent illness, carried a newfound certainty. He bent at Severus’s side, voice low and private, his head tilted in such a way that only the other man could hear. Whatever was shared between them passed in silence, Severus offering a subtle nod in return, something unspoken but understood. There were no dramatics, only the quiet exchange of trust shaped in their own language.

A breath hitched in Hermione’s throat, the dam breaking as she clung to George. “I’m so sorry, Georgie,” she whispered, her voice ragged, raw against the collar of his shirt. Tears warmed the corner of her eyes as Harry's arms tightened around both of them, the familiarity of their embrace anchoring her.

“Don’t,” George murmured, voice muffled by her curls as he held her just as tightly. “There’s nothing to be sorry for, Min. Just... don’t cut me out again, yeah?”

Her head bobbed against his shoulder, the motion small but full of aching sincerity. “I promise,” she managed, her voice thick with emotion. “I’ve missed you so much.”

Behind them, Harry gave a wet, huffed laugh that shook in his chest. “We’re all a bunch of idiots.”

Two amused snorts echoed behind her, one familiar and sardonic, the other low and tired. The floo erupted with a burst of green flame before she could even turn her head, and George flushed, one hand rising to rub awkwardly at the back of his neck. “So, um,” he muttered, not quite meeting her eyes, “I might’ve called in reinforcements.”

A stampede of footfalls pounded down the stairs above, quick and uneven, and before anyone could fully react, three heads popped into view from the doorway—Luna, Lavender, and Percy, tumbling into the kitchen in a flurry of tangled limbs, tousled hair, and concern stretched across their faces.

Lavender wasted no time and melted into the group hug with quiet urgency, wrapping her arms around all three of them like she belonged there—because she did. Luna hovered for a heartbeat longer, her wide, dreamy eyes meeting Hermione’s with silent understanding before she, too, stepped forward at Hermione’s subtle nod, her embrace feather-light but deeply grounding.

Percy stood off to the side, his mouth a thin line and his posture stiff with indecision. He looked like he was torn between hurling a curse and vanishing into thin air, his brows knitting together as indecision flared across his face. But after a beat—just long enough for everyone in the room to notice—he drew in a sharp breath, squared his shoulders, and walked toward George with the resolve of someone preparing for battle. The hug he gave was stiff but deliberate, arms wrapping around his younger brother with a tension that eased only slightly once George returned the gesture. It wasn't exactly affectionate, but it held the weight of unspoken apologies and long overdue attempts. For them, it was something closer to a beginning than an end. Progress, in the rawest sense of the word.

“Mum sent them to you too?” Percy asked, voice edged in disbelief, as he looked over George’s shoulder.

George gave a sharp nod. “Window nearly shattered.”

Before anyone could respond, a gentle swish of magic rippled through the air. The conversation paused as all eyes turned to the far left wall of the kitchen. Where once there had been solid stone, there now shimmered a newly conjured set of tall, arched glass doors—sunlight streaming through into what could only be a solarium. Hermione’s breath caught. Vines curled across the panes, golden light spilling into the dark corners of the room like a soft blessing.

At the source stood Sirius and Severus—Sirius upright, wand extended in a sweeping arc, and Severus seated in his wheelchair beside him, his own wand held with practised ease in his lap, the sharp precision of his movements betraying none of the limitations his body now endured. Their bickering had clearly accompanied the spellwork, low and constant like an old married couple grumbling over curtain fabric.

Hermione smiled, the ache in her chest loosening just slightly as she glanced toward the source of sunlight now pouring into the old kitchen. It was remarkable—how a single change could reshape the whole feel of a space. Grimmauld Place, which for so long had been a mausoleum of shadows and secrets, suddenly breathed like a living place again. It wasn’t just the physical warmth of the sunlight—it was the way it touched every face in the room, illuminating all that had fractured and all that had mended.

Harry’s voice broke the quiet reverie. “What is this then?” he asked, blinking toward the glass doors, his voice still hoarse with emotion.

“My dear, dead hag of a mother might have been a harpy,” Sirius replied, drawing everyone’s attention as he leaned with casual poise against the stone archway, “but she did know how to enjoy beautiful things.”

George gave a sharp laugh, stepping closer to Sirius with a grin tugging at his mouth. “She had elf heads mounted like trophies, Sirius.” He shook his head fondly. “Still, good to see you, old man.”

Sirius's grin widened, soft and real. “You too, Georgie.” Then, catching sight of another familiar face, he added, “And it is good to see you as well, Percy.”

Percy gave a curt but genuine nod. “Likewise, Mr. Black. Professor,” he said formally, directing the second greeting toward Severus, who sat tall in his wheelchair.

Severus’s response was a simple nod, his expression unreadable. Then, turning his head toward Sirius, he narrowed his eyes in exaggerated impatience. “Well, do go on, Mut. We haven’t got all day."

Sirius rolled his eyes but tapped his wand against the glass door. With a gentle click, the frame yielded, and the door swung open on near-silent hinges. “This is a breakfast solarium,” he said, voice tinged with nostalgic warmth as he peered inside.

Hermione moved to stand beside him. Her eyes swept across the space, drawn immediately to the elegance of the structure. The room looked untouched by time. Gleaming panes of glass arched overhead in graceful lines, the interior bathed in a soft wash of light. An ornate cast-iron table sat at the centre, flanked by chairs upholstered in emerald and gold fabric. Overhead, ivy had encroached from the outside, trailing down in thick, twisting vines that kissed the glass and whispered of the years gone by.

“It was under a stasis charm?” Hermione asked, her voice hushed as she stepped into the room. Her fingers brushed the back of one chair reverently, as if touching history.

“Yes,” Sirius replied, watching her closely. “One of the few things she protected for beauty’s sake.”

The air inside smelled faintly of old citrus and lavender oil, a ghost of perfume clinging to the Victorian breakfast room that once echoed with the idle chatter of a long-dead family. Hermione could almost hear the clink of porcelain cups, the rustle of newspapers. In that moment, the house felt different. Not haunted, but paused. Not dead, but waiting.

“You lot go on, find seats and catch up. Sevy and I will sort out breakfast—brunch—whatever this meal qualifies as,” Sirius said, shooting Severus a wicked grin as he headed for the kitchen. Severus groaned in exaggerated suffering, muttering, “I despise you,” before wheeling himself toward the stove with an air of long-suffering dignity. Sirius merely laughed and followed, already rifling through cupboards like a man on a mission.

The young adults gathered around the solarium table, sinking into the old but elegant chairs with varying degrees of caution. George leaned sideways, squinting into the kitchen through the glass. “You sure they won’t kill each other?” he asked dubiously, just as Severus raised a spatula threateningly in Sirius’s direction.

“They’re practically best mates now,” Harry replied, the curve of his lips betraying a smile that never quite reached the dark shadows beneath his eyes. “It’s disturbing, honestly. But also a little bit adorable, in a deeply unsettling way.”

Percy adjusted his posture and gave Hermione a pointed look, one brow arched with textbook Weasley scepticism. “Would you care to explain exactly how we arrived at this version of reality? The last time I checked, those two couldn’t be within a ten-foot radius without trying to curse each other’s kneecaps.”

From the kitchen came a raucous laugh followed by Sirius’s voice, rich with amusement. “Stay back, you bat!”

Hermione let out a tired groan and pressed the heel of her hand into her forehead like she could massage the absurdity out of her skull. “I was Severus’s emergency contact. When St. Mungo’s contacted me to say he’d woken up, I came straight back to London. No one else was listed.”

“She practically kidnapped the man,” Harry supplied with a dry chuckle, clearly enjoying himself despite the undercurrent of fatigue.

“I did not,” Hermione retorted indignantly, crossing her arms in protest. “That’s libel, Harry James Potter.”

“I’m glad you’re back, Min,” Percy said softly, the warmth in his voice undercutting his usual reserve. The sincerity in his eyes caused something in her chest to loosen.

“I’m sorry I didn’t reach out sooner,” Hermione said, her voice quieter now, more vulnerable. She reached across the table, fingers curling around Percy’s and George’s in turn. “I wasn’t trying to shut anyone out. I just—things were complicated. Still are, in some ways.”

Percy offered her a small, reassuring squeeze. “Don’t worry about it. What matters is that you’re here now.”

George nodded, his expression lacking its usual mischief, replaced instead with something gentler. Lavender, who had been unusually silent, leaned forward then, elbows on the table, concern etched into every line of her brow.

“Can someone please explain what the hell actually happened today?” Lavender asked, her voice low and controlled but edged with an undercurrent of incredulous urgency. Her eyes darted between them, wide with disbelief, as sunlight filtered through the ivy-strewn glass, casting soft golden shadows that flickered across their faces and the table like echoes of the morning’s chaos.

George released an exaggerated sigh and let himself fall back in his chair with a dramatic thump, his expression twisted into a mask of mock tragedy. "Our mum being her ever-charming, fire-breathing self," he grumbled, sarcasm oozing from each syllable like treacle gone bitter.

Percy, ever the voice of grounded reason, glanced toward Lavender with a grim nod. “I reckon you’re next on her warpath, Lav.” The tone of his voice carried a chill that undercut his otherwise composed demeanour.

Lavender responded by placing her hand over her heart, as if shielding herself from an invisible blow. Her fingers curled theatrically, clutching imaginary pearls. “What did I do to deserve that?” she asked in mock outrage, eyes wide with feigned innocence.

George merely shook his head, slow and sorrowful, as if bearing the weight of ancestral knowledge. “It was one of those Sunday lunches at the Burrow. You know the ones—everyone pretends to play nice until someone says the wrong thing and suddenly the bread rolls are flying like explosive curses by pudding.”

Percy leaned forward, elbows on the table, his expression one of reluctant participation. “I usually make it a point to miss them entirely. But this time, I went. Ron had been insufferable all week at the Ministry—ranting on about how you,” he gave Hermione a pointed nod, “were now playing house with a man returned from the dead, Snape, and Harry. Subtlety has never been his strong suit.”

Hermione's brows arched in alarm, but before she could speak, George held up a staying hand. “Let us finish, Granger.”

He continued with a dry laugh. “So Percy and I made a calculated sacrifice—armed ourselves with patience and treacle tart—and showed up to see if the rumours were as ridiculous as Ron was making them sound. And, well, he did not disappoint. Went on and on about how you dragged Sirius out of death, how you’ve corrupted Harry, how Snape is living in the attic. Honestly, I lost track of the absurdities.”

“He was relentless,” Percy added with a grimace. “The usual complaints didn’t land, not really. But then—he said you stole Harry from Ginny.”

George’s expression darkened slightly as he fixed Hermione with a more serious look. “That’s what snapped Mum’s attention into sharp focus. Like someone dropped a Howler in the mashed potatoes.”

Harry shifted awkwardly in his seat and rubbed the back of his neck, his discomfort plain. “But Ginny and I broke up months ago,” he said, almost as if trying to convince himself more than anyone else.

Hermione noticed something flicker across George’s features—a brief but unmistakable softness—as Harry glanced his way, his cheeks tinged pink. George returned the look with a crooked grin and an unmistakable wink that made Hermione blink.

“We know,” George said simply. “But apparently Ginny didn’t share that bit with Mum.”

Lavender stared at them all with wide, stunned eyes, like they’d begun speaking a foreign language mid-conversation. “Holy shit,” she whispered.

“Holy shit is right,” Percy muttered, straightening in his chair before beginning to pace with purpose, his hands clasped tightly behind his back. “Once Mum had everyone’s full attention—and I do mean full —she asked Ronald to repeat himself. Which, of course, he did. Merlin forbid he pass up the chance to hear his own voice echo around the kitchen.”

George chuckled dryly, leaning forward with his arms draped across the table. “By then, Bill had already made his escape with Victoire in tow. Fleur never comes to these anymore—says it’s not worth the heartburn.” He glanced at Lavender, who gave a half-smile. “But Percy and I decided to stay. We had a feeling it was going to blow.”

Percy nodded, still pacing, his brows drawn tight in recollection. “As Ron wrapped up his rant for the second time—because he just had to reiterate every bloody word—Mum turned her wrath on Ginny. Started asking pointed questions, the sort you can’t dodge, no matter how clever you think you are.”

George picked up the thread, his voice now stripped of humour. “Ginny cracked. Confessed everything. That Luna and Lav knew. That Harry broke things off ages ago. That he chose Hermione. That he wasn’t coming back.” He gave Lavender a quick glance, an unspoken apology in his eyes.

“And that,” Percy continued, pausing in his pacing and jabbing an accusatory finger through the air, “was the exact moment our dear sister decided to deflect Mum’s fury. She redirected it towards Luna, Lavender, and anyone else who hadn’t immediately run to tell her every little secret. Mum’s list of enemies was growing longer with every breath.”

George leaned back in his chair, the tension radiating off him as he ran a hand through his tousled hair. “Ron snapped,” he said, voice low and tight. “Started yelling louder than before, Ginny was sobbing, Mum was screeching, and the whole house felt like it might come down around us. Then she said it—something neither Percy nor I could let slide.”

Harry’s face lost what little colour remained in it, his voice barely more than a breath. “What did she say?”

George and Percy exchanged a long look—one filled with years of brotherhood and shared battles—before Percy answered. His voice was flat, almost too calm, but the restrained anger curled beneath his words like a blade hidden in silk. “She called Hermione a whore.”

The word dropped like a curse between them, heavy and poisonous. In the same breath, a thunderous crash erupted from the kitchen—ceramic or glass, shattering on tile. Severus’s voice immediately followed, sharp and commanding, slicing through the air like a whip. “Black! Do not be a fool!”

Grimmauld Place - 2001 - Sirius

Sirius was having a surprisingly good time cooking with Severus, despite the man being the same grumpy, snide, moody bastard he’d always been. But there was something different now—something Sirius couldn’t quite put his finger on. Maybe it was the way Severus wielded sarcasm like a fine blade or how his dry wit had just the right amount of bitterness to make Sirius laugh instead of bristle. Or maybe it was the way Severus’s expression had tightened in mock outrage when Sirius had flicked a bit of flour at him, prompting a dramatic brandish of the spatula in retaliation. Sirius had found it, against all odds and sanity, genuinely adorable. And that was a rabbit hole of thought he wasn’t about to explore too deeply.

They had fallen into a rhythm—Sirius cracking eggs and mixing batter while Severus stirred the mushrooms and muttered about grease levels—when the conversation from the solarium drifted their way. At first, it was background noise: Lavender’s incredulous tone, George’s dramatic retelling, Percy’s clipped, methodical delivery. But then the tone shifted. The weight in the words grew heavier, and Sirius saw Severus pause, tilting his head.

Without exchanging a word, Severus cast a sound amplification charm, and the solarium’s voices became sharp, precise echoes through the kitchen. They shared a glance over the stove—one of many that morning—and something in the lines around Severus’s mouth told Sirius this wasn’t going to end in laughter.

Eyebrows lifted in silent astonishment, frowns deepened in disbelief, and at least once Sirius mouthed, what the fuck , only to see it mirrored back with Severus’s usual disdainful flair. It was ridiculous how in sync they’d become, like two seasoned performers trading barbs in a long-running play neither wanted to admit they enjoyed.

Then Percy’s voice carried through with calm clarity: “She called Hermione a whore.”

Time stopped.

The bowl slipped from Sirius’s hands and shattered against the tiled floor. Pancake batter splattered across the room in a grotesque echo of the words still ringing in his ears. His fingers clenched into fists at his sides as the rage surged, hot and blinding. His mind flooded with the sharp memory of Molly’s judgmental eyes and scathing tongue—how she’d spoken to Hermione when she was just fifteen, accused her of stringing Harry along, of being manipulative, when all she’d ever done was survive and remain kind. That memory, so close to the surface, burned now like an old wound torn open.

He didn’t remember moving. One moment, he was standing in the kitchen, heart pounding. The next, he was storming down the hallway, fire under his feet, purpose etched into every step. He vaguely registered Severus’s voice shouting, “Black! Don’t be a fool!” but the words barely broke through the haze. His ears were ringing. His pulse thundered. Molly could insult him. She could shout at Harry—though even that had limits—but she would not, under any circumstances, drag Hermione through the mud again.

He reached the Floo room, breath ragged, vision narrowed, only to be tackled from behind with a grunt and a crash. They hit the carpet hard, his shoulder slamming into the floor with a thud. "Oi! Off!" he snarled, twisting beneath the weight until he was rolled onto his back and staring up into Harry’s green eyes.

Sirius growled low in his throat, a sound born of frustration and fury, and before he could think better of it, he flipped them, slamming Harry to the floor with more force than necessary. The air whooshed out of the younger man’s lungs.

The words were poison in Sirius’s mouth, each syllable seething with the heat of outrage barely restrained. "She called her a whore," he hissed, his voice cracking with fury. It wasn’t just anger—it was insult, memory, and protective instinct colliding in a storm that surged through every inch of him. "I am not letting that slide, Pup."

Harry’s expression shifted with jarring immediacy. His eyes widened, hands lifting in a calming gesture that somehow made Sirius burn hotter. “I know,” he said carefully, like one might approach a wounded animal. “I heard. But don’t be reckless, Padfoot. Don’t give her more ammunition. That’s all she ever needs to twist the truth into something foul.”

The sound of Harry’s voice wavered at the edges of Sirius’s perception, blurred by the pulse pounding in his ears. He could feel the tension radiating from his own skin, fists clenched, heart hammering like it was trying to break out of his ribs. Then, through the noise, came another voice—quieter, but sharper than any scream.

“Please, Sirius.”

He looked up, his entire body still buzzing with tension, and there she was—Hermione standing in the doorway, motionless, as if she too had been struck by the same current running through him. Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears, wide and glassy, and her bottom lip quivered despite the way her jaw was set tight in restraint. The sight of her, already wounded by the words of a woman who should have protected her, hollowed out something inside him, cleaving through the storm in his chest with surgical precision.

With a breath that came ragged and shaking, Sirius let go of Harry and moved without thought, his steps purposeful and full of aching urgency. He crossed the space in only a few strides, his arms coming up to gather her close with a gentleness that didn’t match the violent churn of his thoughts. His hands curved around her shoulders, drawing her into the warmth of his chest like a shield. She sank into him at once, her small frame folding into the safety of his embrace, arms winding tight around his waist. Her forehead pressed into his sternum, and he could feel the dampness of her tears through the fabric of his shirt, her breath catching with each inhale as she clung to him like he was the only thing holding her together.

“I’m sorry, little love,” he murmured into her curls, his voice thick with the kind of guilt that left splinters in the throat. He could feel the tremor running through her spine, the shallow cadence of her breath against his chest, and the damp warmth of her tears seeping through the fabric of his shirt. Holding her like this made the chaos in his mind settle, just a little, enough to remind him what he stood to lose.

Hermione’s reply came muffled by his shirt, but the strength in her tone was unmistakable. “You can’t act on impulse, Sirius. Last time you did that… we lost you. I can’t lose you again.”

Those words cut deeper than any curse could. He tightened his arms around her like he could shield her from the memory of that loss, from the ache that lingered behind her eyes. Pressing a kiss to her temple, he held her as if proximity alone could serve as penance, as if the frantic beat of his heart against her cheek could promise he’d never leave her like that again.

The tension that had gripped the hallway began to loosen, though not by much, as Percy and George stepped closer. Sirius, still holding Hermione protectively against his chest, looked up through the halo of her wild curls and met the eyes of the two Weasley brothers. There was no need for explanation. The anger simmering behind their gazes mirrored his own.

“What did you two do when your mum said that?” Sirius asked, his voice low, rough with restrained fury, but curious in its own way—as if he needed to know they hadn’t simply stood by.

George leaned against the doorframe, his usual mischief cloaked beneath a layer of quiet rage. He gave a lopsided shrug, the gesture almost lazy if not for the tightly clenched jaw and the flicker of heat in his eyes. “I blew up the pie. Right in her face,” he said, the words sharp but laced with a grim sort of satisfaction. “Custard went everywhere. She deserved it.”

Percy, always the more measured of the two, nodded slowly, the lines on his face drawn tighter than usual. His voice, when it came, carried the finality of someone who had made peace with the cost of honesty. “I told her to fuck off. Then I smacked Ron. I’m officially banned from the Burrow until I apologise.” He didn’t sound regretful. Just tired.

A breath escaped Sirius—not quite a laugh, not quite a growl. Somewhere between relief and dark amusement. His hand tightened on Hermione’s back, grounding himself in her presence. “Good,” he muttered, his tone low and cutting. “About damn time someone stood up to that woman.” He paused, his lips twitching despite himself. “But next time, save me a slice of that pie.”

A groan sounded from behind, and Severus emerged into view, sitting in his lift chair with the slow, resigned air of someone already regretting the conversation ahead. He rubbed his face with both hands, dragging his palms down over his mouth before fixing a narrow-eyed glare in Sirius’s direction. “I do believe,” he muttered, his voice hoarse with exasperation, “it’s time we all get piss-poor drunk and talk.”

Sirius let out a bark of laughter and leaned in to kiss the top of Hermione’s head, his expression softened by a rare tenderness. “That, Sevy, is the best fucking idea you’ve ever had.”

Severus scowled, but the edges of his mouth twitched against his will. “Fuck you,” he growled, though the insult lacked its usual venom.

Sirius smirked, eyes gleaming as he shot back, “You wish, Sevy,” with a wink that made Hermione snort into his shoulder.

The younger crowd watched them in fascination, their gazes darting between the two older wizards like spectators at a particularly absurd tennis match. Hermione’s quiet giggle grew into something fuller, muffled against Sirius’s chest, and both men stilled for a moment, soaking it in. There was a serenity to the sound—light, unguarded, real—that cracked something in each of them open just a little more. For that moment, at least, the darkness was kept at bay.

Grimmauld Place - 2001 - Severus

Severus hadn’t anticipated that his flippant remark about getting piss-poor drunk would be taken with such alarming enthusiasm. But then again, he should have known better—nothing in this house was ever done by halves. What began as a late breakfast had somehow, through a blur of Weasley chaos and emotional volatility, morphed into a full-blown midday gathering that teetered dangerously on the edge of being called a party.

After Sirius's melodramatic outburst and Hermione's soft giggles—so unexpected, so sharp in contrast—they had all drifted back into the kitchen like survivors of some strange storm. The Weasley brothers, now animated and unusually cooperative, took it upon themselves to clean up the mess. Severus watched from his chair as Percy flicked his wand with quiet precision while George managed three floating bowls and a whisk with exaggerated flair. Pots and pans zipped through the air like overexcited pixies, ingredients conjured or fetched with minimal coordination and maximum noise. Harry had joined in as well, rolling up his sleeves and laughing at something George muttered. It was a scene Severus would never have imagined finding himself in the middle of—not in this life.

Sirius, naturally, had vanished to the basement moments earlier, promising “proper drinks” with a gleam in his eye that Severus didn’t trust one bit. The man had taken the girls with him—Luna, Lavender, and Hermione—no doubt to dazzle them with old Black family reserves and whatever swagger he could conjure in a cellar full of dust and aged oak. That left Severus alone, more or less, in the centre of the bustling room. Forgotten, but not in a bad way. Rather, comfortably overlooked, like a fixture no one thought to question.

He sat there quietly, hands resting on the arms of his wheelchair, and let his thoughts circle like caged moths. Hermione’s kiss lingered on his mind—not imagined, he was certain of that. She had kissed him that morning, a sweet, chaste thing that had no place in the catalogue of his lived experience. It hadn’t been manipulative or performative. It hadn’t even been hesitant. It had been... kind . And that, perhaps more than anything, left him bewildered.

He also found himself thinking—absurdly, and with no small measure of unease—about how much he had enjoyed cooking with Sirius. Not tolerated. Not endured. Enjoyed. They’d fallen into a rhythm that didn’t feel forced. There had been teasing and eye-rolling and minor acts of sabotage with the butter dish, but also a sense of camaraderie that Severus hadn’t known he was capable of. It disturbed him, not because it was wrong, but because it felt so natural. So easy . He had never imagined himself as someone who could do domesticity. Or perhaps he had, once, when he was very young and very stupid, before the war taught him that quiet mornings and laughter were indulgences for other people.

He exhaled slowly, forcing the intrusive thoughts back into the dark cupboard of his mind just as the kitchen door swung open. The noise increased tenfold as Sirius burst in, bottles clinking merrily in his arms, trailed by the three witches like some absurd wine-soaked pied piper. He dropped the collection of reds and ambers onto the table with theatrical flourish and then, without hesitation, crossed to Severus and squeezed his shoulder.

It was a simple gesture, casual in its familiarity, but it landed like a puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit. Sirius touched him often, Severus had realised. Nothing overtly inappropriate—no lingering hands or suggestive brushes—but little things: a pat on the knee, a hand at the small of his back when manoeuvring the chair, a squeeze to the shoulder like this one. Severus might have dismissed it as Sirius being Sirius—an irrepressibly tactile man, forged half of arrogance and half of Azkaban-starved longing for human contact—but it was the constancy that unnerved him.

This was not the Black of their school days. That Sirius had thrown hexes and insults, had flung arrogance like confetti and never looked back. But this Sirius... this version seemed to carry guilt in his bones and warmth in his palms, and Severus didn’t know what to do with either of those things.

Still, his hand moved of its own accord, reaching up to pat the one resting on his shoulder. It was brief. Hesitant. A silent truce forged not in words but in muscle memory and weary acceptance. Yet even as his hand dropped back to his lap, his eyes stayed fixed on Hermione’s retreating form as she moved to join Harry, Percy, and George at the stove. Her curls bounced as she laughed at something Percy said, and there was a lightness in her that hadn’t been in months. It did strange things to Severus’s chest—tightened it in ways he didn’t understand.

Sirius squeezed his shoulder once more before stepping away, his usual swagger returning as he joined Luna and Lavender, who were already conspiring over some elaborate dessert plan. The clink of glass and the hum of conversation filled the room, but Severus remained where he was, anchored in the centre of the chaos. Still. Quiet. Watching.

And for the first time in decades, Severus did not feel like the odd man out. That quiet, unfamiliar sense of inclusion—a kind of weightless companionship—lingered with him throughout the meal. They had dined in the newly opened, sun-drenched Breakfast Solarium, a room that once belonged to the strict rhythms of morning etiquette but now stood reclaimed by laughter and the scent of buttered toast. No one seemed to care that it was the wrong time of day for such a room, least of all Sirius, who had snorted at the idea of his mother’s ghost rolling in her grave over the casual misuse of ancestral space.

Sirius, to Severus’s faint surprise, had been moderate—just a single glass of firewhisky before the meal and a modest pour of red wine with it, before switching to something altogether unexpected: Coca-Cola. Of all things. Severus had arched a brow at that, and Harry, with his characteristic mix of honesty and unflinching softness, had explained that juice was always to be kept in the house now. The Dursleys, it turned out, had never bothered to offer him any. They hadn’t offered much of anything.

That conversation had undone Severus. Utterly. It was a quiet detonation, the kind that rippled through his body with delayed devastation. He had sat there, fork paused midair, as a sudden, strangling sense of shame curled around his chest like smoke. He had hated Harry for his father’s face, but never saw the quiet echoes of Lily in the boy’s eyes, his bravery, his empathy. If he had been able to walk, to move with even the most basic ease, he might have dragged himself to a mirror just to slap the reflection that had once called that child a nuisance. He had been cruel to Harry. And to Hermione. And to others, too. Unforgivably so.

And yet… they had forgiven him. Somewhere between fire and time, they had chosen kindness over vengeance. He tried to eat through the guilt, to push food past the burning lump in his throat, but his blood had begun to roar in his ears and his lungs constricted as if the room were being pulled underwater. His hands began to tremble. His vision swam. The world narrowed to heat and pressure and the desperate instinct not to fall apart in front of everyone.

Someone noticed—thank Merlin, someone noticed.

He didn’t remember the exact moment the spiral began, only that his wheelchair had suddenly stopped feeling real beneath him. Then, without warning, he was no longer alone in that suffocating silence. Arms came around him, strong and insistent, gathering him up like something precious and breakable. The heat of another body bled through his skin, pulling him back from the jagged edge of collapse. A sob, raw and guttural, tore itself from the depths of his chest before he could stop it. The world was movement, blurred voices, and then a firm click of a door shutting them away from prying eyes. Beneath him, something soft—cushions or blankets—supported his trembling limbs as he was lowered with careful precision. A hand, steady and cool, tilted his chin up.

Through the fog, a face emerged. Sirius. Eyes lined with worry, mouth pressed into a tight line that betrayed more tenderness than Severus thought the man capable of. Everything felt muffled, like he was hearing through waterlogged ears, but Sirius’s voice broke through eventually, low and grounding.

“Come on, old man, match me. I’ve got you.”

Then there was a pressure, solid and unwavering—Sirius had taken Severus’s shaking hand and pressed it to his own chest. Beneath the fabric, the rhythm of Sirius’s heart beat slow and sure, like the ticking of a grandfather clock in an otherwise chaotic room. The steady thump of Sirius’s heart under his palm anchored him, an unspoken reminder that he was not alone in this. There was something profoundly human in that pulse—reassuring, almost maddeningly so. For a man like Severus, who had spent most of his life surrounded by silence or cruelty, the sensation of someone else being undeniably alive, and tethering him back to the moment with nothing more than a heartbeat, was as jarring as it was grounding.

“In for four, hold for eight, out at four,” Sirius said again, voice softer now, more coaxing than instructive.

Severus closed his eyes and tried. He focused on the numbers, on the cadence of breath rather than the noise in his head. Slowly, painfully, the panic began to loosen its grip. His chest stopped fluttering like a bird trapped in a cage, his limbs felt less like foreign extensions, and clarity began to bleed back into his senses. The world didn’t feel quite so far away.

He drew in a breath that was mostly steady and rasped, “Why are you so kind to me?” The question cracked as it came out, hoarse with confusion and the remnants of shame still coating his tongue.

Sirius blinked, then cocked an eyebrow in that maddening way of his. “Would you prefer I be a bastard to you?”

The corner of Severus’s mouth twitched—almost a smirk, almost. “No,” he said, truth heavy in every syllable. “But this… this is confusing.”

There was a pause, and then Sirius’s expression softened. The bravado drained away, leaving something vulnerable in its wake. “I know,” he murmured. “It’s confusing for me too.”

Then, in a voice so quiet it barely brushed the space between them, Sirius added, “You’re the only thing I have left from my time.”

The words landed like a punch to the ribs—sharp, unexpected, and utterly true. Severus flinched, not from pain, but from the magnitude of it. Of all the truths he’d tried to bury beneath logic and cynicism, that one came barreling forth with undeniable weight. Because Sirius was right. For all the broken glass and burnt bridges between them, for all the decades of war and betrayal, Severus was the only one left who remembered the boy Sirius once was. And—he hated the admission—Sirius was all he had left from that time, too. That shared, fractured past loomed large between them, the only tether to a history so few were left to remember. The truth of it sat heavy on Severus’s chest, bitter and unrelenting.

As if summoned by that realisation, the panic surged again. It coiled low in his belly and climbed into his throat like a living thing, clawing at his breath until his lungs refused to cooperate. His fingers curled tight into the cushion beneath him as his vision began to blur, the world narrowing into that same familiar spiral. He barely heard Sirius’s curse—"Oh, shit"—before warm lips pressed to his own.

It was like being plunged into hot water after standing too long in the cold. Severus gasped in reflex, the sheer shock of it tearing a startled noise from his throat. Then, with an audacity that should have been infuriating, Sirius deepened the kiss—sliding his tongue past parted lips and coaxing a reaction out of Severus that bypassed thought entirely.

His body betrayed him first. It leaned in, surrendered, melted into the heat and softness of the kiss before his mind could throw up its usual defences. And once his brain caught up, once the magnitude of what was happening crashed down upon him, Severus pulled back, breathless and pink-cheeked, eyes wide behind his fringe. Sirius, the absolute menace, had the nerve to grin at him.

Severus sat there, breath still uneven, trying to grasp hold of his bearings as the heat of the kiss lingered like a curse and a comfort all at once. He stared at Sirius, who was now lounging with maddening ease, as though kissing him had been as mundane as passing the salt. When Severus finally found his voice, it was hoarse, tight with disbelief, the edges frayed with something dangerously close to vulnerability.

"Why in Merlin’s name did you do that?" he asked, tone brittle, more accusation than curiosity, though even he couldn’t deny the tremor behind it.

Sirius shrugged, one shoulder rising in that infuriatingly casual way, lips quirking just slightly. "You were spiralling again," he said, as if that explained everything—as if kissing him senseless was the most natural antidote to a panic attack.

Severus narrowed his eyes, blinking once, then again, as though trying to make sense of the man before him. "So your brilliant solution," he said slowly, voice lined with incredulity, "was to snog me until I forgot my own bloody name?"

"It worked, didn’t it?" Sirius said, and he had the sheer audacity to smirk.

For a long moment, Severus just stared, caught between outrage and amusement. Then, against his own instincts and better judgment, he laughed. It tore free from his chest unexpectedly, raw and unfiltered, the sound strange in his own ears. It was genuine, and it startled him more than the kiss.

He reached up, brushing fingers over lips still tingling with residual heat, and exhaled with a huff of something almost like disbelief. "Yeah," he admitted quietly, letting the word settle between them. "Yeah, it did."

The stillness shattered with a sudden, loud bang at the door, making Severus jerk. The carefully woven magic that had shielded the room fractured in an instant—Sirius must have locked it with a silencing charm, a gesture Severus had neither asked for nor expected. The fact that he had thought to protect the moment in such a subtle way sent another ripple of confusion through Severus’s already unsteady composure.

Sirius rose from the floor with fluid ease, moving toward him until he was braced on the sofa, one arm resting on either side of Severus’s hips. It boxed Severus in—not with threat, but with something heavier, more intimate. The closeness stole Severus’s breath, his throat working around a swallow that felt far too loud.

The door shuddered again under another urgent knock. Sirius leaned in, so close that Severus could feel his breath ghost over the shell of his ear. His body betrayed him once more—spine stiffening, breath catching, skin prickling beneath his collar. Then Sirius whispered, low and amused, the words curling through him like smoke.

"Maybe if we have the little witch kiss you, you’ll stop being a panicking idiot."

The kiss that followed—a soft press to his temple—unravelled whatever composure Severus still had. It was far too gentle, far too steadying, and it didn’t help that Sirius then flicked a hand toward the door with a lazy charm. There was a click, and just like that, the barrier fell.

Six young adults stumbled inside like dominos collapsing, their energy loud and urgent. Sirius moved to sit beside him again, close enough that Severus could feel the heat radiating from him.

Severus’s eyes found Hermione first. She was staring at him, eyes wide, brows pinched with concern. Then his gaze shifted to Sirius—who, of course, was watching him like he was something fragile and complicated, something worth holding together.

Severus blinked once, slow and deliberate. Oh, he thought grimly, despairingly. He was utterly, completely fucked.

Hermione moved towards him with the kind of urgency that made Severus blink in slow confusion. She dropped to her knees before him, her hands resting gently on his thighs, grounding him with the warmth of her touch. He stared down into her face—freckled, open, deeply concerned. Her brows were knit together, and her wide, brown eyes shimmered with the kind of worry that clawed straight through his carefully maintained defences. Merlin help him, those eyes would be the death of him.

Before he could process the full weight of her presence, another sensation found him. A familiar pressure on the side of his neck—a thumb stroking in slow, steady passes. Sirius. Of course it was Sirius. Always bloody Sirius, with his infuriating intuition and maddeningly gentle touch. The stroke of that thumb didn’t just soothe; it disarmed him, undoing the tension thread by reluctant thread.

Out of the corner of his eye, Severus noticed Lavender standing nearby, her wand already mid-motion, murmuring a diagnostic charm beneath her breath. A soft blue light danced across his torso and chest before fading. She didn’t speak, but her nod to herself told him she’d found nothing alarming.

“What happened?” Harry’s voice broke through, thick with concern. Severus didn’t look up. He couldn’t, not with the weight of Hermione’s hands on his legs and Sirius’s touch on his neck still anchoring him.

“Oh, nothing this house hasn’t seen before,” came Sirius’s dry voice from his left, as if panic attacks were a staple of their decor. “A mild one this time. Severus is alright now. Aren’t you, love?”

The endearment floated in the air like a lit match, and Severus felt the burn of it even if his mind refused to acknowledge it aloud. He might’ve let it go unnoticed—might’ve forced it into the back of his mind—if Hermione hadn’t moved in that exact moment.

Her hands slid up his thighs, warm and sure, and then she was leaning forward, wrapping her arms around his middle and burying her face in his abdomen. The pressure of her hug, the comfort of her weight—it was overwhelming in the best and worst ways. Instinctively, his hand moved to her hair, his fingers combing gently through her curls as he scratched her scalp in slow, measured motions.

"I’m fine, little witch," he murmured, his voice hoarse with something he wasn’t ready to name. His gaze lifted just in time to meet Sirius’s again, and he noted that damnable thumb still stroking his neck as if Sirius didn’t even realise he was doing it—or worse, did.

It might have stayed like that, suspended in some quiet, absurdly tender dimension, if not for George’s voice cutting across the moment like a hex, “Would you three like us to leave you alone?”

Severus groaned, low and heartfelt, and collapsed forward, pressing his flaming face into Hermione’s curls in something between mortification and surrender. Her giggle vibrated softly against his chest, and Sirius’s bark of laughter rang out unrepentant beside them.

Chapter Text

Grimmauld Place - 2001 - Hermione

The nightmare claimed her before she even had a chance to realise she’d slipped into sleep. One moment she was nestled beneath the weight of thick quilts in her room at Grimmauld Place, cocooned in the muted scent of cedarwood and ancient parchment, the air heavy with safety and stillness. The next, her world ruptured. Her skin blistered with phantom heat, a cruel echo of fire dancing across her nerves. The scorched stench of burning flesh smothered her breath, twisted with the sharp, coppery tang of blood. Bellatrix Lestrange’s laughter, manic and unforgettable, rang through the abyss—a jagged melody of torment that scraped down her spine.

She surged upright, throat burning, lungs straining. A scream clawed its way through her chest but never found voice. Sweat drenched her nightdress, gluing the fabric to her back, and her hands were fists in the tangled sheets, fingers white-knuckled and raw. The moonlight that slipped through the curtains fell like cold steel across her trembling body, exposing her not to comfort, but to the agony rooted deep within her bones. The floor beneath her no longer felt like wood—it was marble, cold and unyielding, and she was back there, in that room of horrors.

She didn’t remember reaching for her wand. Didn’t register the whispered Lumos or the way pale light spilled across the shadow-drenched walls. But the door crashed open with a sharp creak, and a gust of night air rushed in as if the house itself had flinched.

Sirius appeared like a storm incarnate. Barefoot and wild-haired, his T-shirt askew, his eyes held no trace of sleep—only raw, immediate fear. In three strides, he was at her bedside, dropping to his knees with barely a breath. "Hermione?" His voice rasped with urgency, hoarse and strained. "It’s alright, little love. You’re safe. You’re home."

Her mouth opened but no words came. Only the shallow, panicked gasps of someone drowning on dry land. Her wand slipped from her grasp, clattering onto the floorboards as she clawed at her chest, as if the terror were something she could rip free from beneath her skin. Her world tilted, the edges blurring, and the only sound she could truly hear was the rapid pounding of her heart.

Another sound followed—wheels, smooth and measured. Severus’s silhouette filled the doorway, sharp as ever, his expression unreadable yet taut with alertness. He crossed the room slowly, but there was nothing hesitant in his presence. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. The weight of his silence spoke volumes.

Sirius shifted beside her, lifting himself onto the bed, wrapping an arm around her shoulders with instinctive protectiveness. His presence radiated warmth, solid and grounding, and she curled into it, trembling as though her very soul had been chilled. Her fingers curled around his shirt, holding on as if it were the only solid thing left in the world.

"Shhh," he murmured against her temple, his lips brushing her sweat-damp hair. "Just breathe. I’ve got you, little love. I’ve got you."

The sobs came then, ragged and wrenching. She clutched at him with desperate hands, anchoring herself to the heat and solidity of his presence. Her entire body trembled with remembered pain, and still it wasn’t enough to shake it loose. "Please," she gasped. "Don’t go. Please... I can’t... not alone. Don’t go."

Severus reached her side. His hand, always steady, brushed a trembling curl from her brow. The gesture was gentle, reverent. "We’re not leaving," he said, calm and resolute. "You’re not alone. Not now. Not again."

Time blurred. The silence between them held the weight of something sacred—no platitudes, only presence. Sirius’s arm never loosened, and Severus’s hand remained where hers found it. Slowly, the storm within her began to ease. Her breath, once jagged and hollow, softened. The tremors dulled to trembles, and the darkness loosened its grip.

Still pressed between them, she drew a shuddering breath and finally broke the silence. Her voice was fractured, barely audible. "There’s something you should know. About what happened. About what she did to me. Bellatrix. At the manor."

Sirius tensed. Not a breath, not a twitch escaped him—but he turned to stone beside her, and his silence roared louder than any outcry.

Hermione sat back, just enough to move her arms. Her fingers trembled—not from fear this time, but from the weight of truth long buried. She gripped the hem of her nightdress and raised it with aching slowness.

The scar revealed was brutal. The skin along her ribs bore the twisted memory of a word no one should ever wear. Puckered, faded, but enduring— Mudblood . Carved with deliberate cruelty, it had aged into her flesh like a cruel relic, the ghost of pain still etched in every ridge.

"She used a Black family blade," Hermione whispered. Her voice held no fire, only a chilling sort of detachment. "It was old magic. Cursed. It burned into me as it cut. No healing charm could erase it. It’s better now... but it never truly faded."

Sirius stared, unmoving. His jaw clenched so tightly that the muscles in his cheek twitched. His arm still held her, but he made no move to touch the scar. There was something like reverence in his stillness. Or shame. Or both.

When his voice came, it was shredded. "She was one of ours," he said, each word tasting of ash. "I should’ve—"

"No." Hermione stopped him with a shake of her head, firm despite the lingering quake in her limbs. "This wasn’t your fault. You weren’t there. She did this. And I survived."

Severus’s hand covered hers with a quiet strength. "You endured," he said, his voice stripped of artifice. "You endured with strength most could not fathom."

Hermione exhaled slowly, the breath leaving her in a long, deliberate sigh that trembled at the edges. The memories would never truly loosen their grip—not entirely. They curled in the corners of her mind, sharp and waiting, ready to bleed into the quiet. But in that moment, framed by the quiet reverence of Severus and the burning, relentless devotion of Sirius, she felt anchored. Somewhere between grief and healing, she found a version of herself she had once lost—the girl who had survived through sheer force of will, who refused to be reduced to the pain carved into her.

She swallowed hard, her throat dry and tight. The question caught in her chest before she gave it voice, hesitant and raw. "Would you... would you sleep with me?" The words came out small, almost shy, and she didn’t dare lift her eyes to meet theirs. She couldn’t bear to see pity. Only the smallest shift in the bed betrayed their surprise. She caught the exchange from the corner of her eye—glances passed between them like silent words, unreadable and heavy. Severus gave a slow, steady nod, and Sirius, warm and solid beside her, loosened his hold.

He shifted without a word, his movements careful and deliberate as he rose. Hermione scooted back to the centre of the bed, her hands still trembling faintly in her lap. She watched as Sirius leaned down, his arms slipping beneath Severus with a tenderness that stunned her. The ease with which Sirius lifted him, the unspoken familiarity in the act, made her chest ache. Severus allowed it without protest, his arms loosely circling Sirius’s shoulders as he was carried and gently settled onto the mattress.

With quiet precision, Sirius climbed in on the opposite side, positioning himself close to the wall. No jokes, no cocky remarks—just presence. Just the quiet solidarity of two men choosing, without question, to hold space for her. To lie beside her, not as protectors or lovers, but as witness and comfort in the darkened hours.

As the three of them eased into the hush of the room, their breathing slowly syncing in a rhythm that quieted the worst of the tremors, a fragile warmth settled over them. The night did not rid itself of shadows, but the sharp edges dulled, softened into something gentler. Hermione shifted first, pressing a grateful kiss to Severus’s cheek and then to Sirius’s, the brush of her lips lingering with unspoken thanks. She reached for Sirius’s arm and drew it across her waist, tucking herself between them, her back pressed to him as she nestled into Severus’s side, wrapping her arm around his torso with slow reverence.

She felt Sirius lean in behind her, his breath ruffling her curls as he inhaled deeply, grounding himself in the scent of her. He placed a trail of kisses along the curve of her neck, each one feather-light and tender. In front of her, Severus’s palm rested gently over her hip, his fingers splayed in silent reassurance. His cheek settled atop her crown, and she closed her eyes to the weight of their quiet affection.

“Thank you,” she murmured, her voice low, shaped more by emotion than sound.

Sirius hummed behind her, his grip tightening around her as though to ward off the night itself. “No need, my little love,” he whispered, his lips moving against her skin in a rhythm that soothed rather than stirred.

“Anytime, my little witch,” Severus added, his voice a blend of steel and gentleness, brushing a kiss to her curls before patting the hand she’d laid across him.

Her breath caught in her chest, sharp and unsure, the question catching somewhere between disbelief and longing. Surely she had imagined the “my” that curled so intimately around their endearments, surely it was a fevered fragment conjured by exhaustion and trauma. That soft, possessive syllable clawed at her, echoing louder than any scream had managed to escape her throat. Because how could they—these two formidable men, carved by fire and grief and lives much harder than hers—speak of her in such a way, as though she were precious? As though she were theirs ?

She pressed her fingers to the scar Bellatrix had left behind, the word carved into her arm with dark ancestral magic, cursed and deliberate. Ron had seen it, he’d been there, at Malfoy Manor, heard Bellatrix's laugh as Hermione screamed, but still, he never looked at the scar again. Never touched it, never asked. When they were together, he wouldn’t touch her. Wouldn’t look at her properly unless she was covered. He told her to glamour the Mudblood scar, that it made him sick to see it, ugly, he had said. The Dolohov scar on her chest fared no better; he flinched whenever his eyes landed on it, as if it were her shame rather than her survival. She remembered the way he had stopped kissing her, how he would drink and rage and blame her for Fred’s death, and how, each time she flinched, he would accuse her of emotional manipulation.

Her breath trembled in her throat, the memory of it all rising like bile. She had covered herself ever since. Long sleeves, glamour charms, silence. It had been easier than being reminded that even someone who claimed to love her could recoil at the marks of what she had endured. The man who once called her brilliant had reduced her to her scars, and in doing so, had reminded her just how disposable she was. But now—now there were hands on her with reverence, not reluctance. There was no revulsion in Sirius’s breath against her neck, no flinch in the gentle press of Severus’s palm. Only warmth. Only acceptance. Only the word my spoken like prayer and possession, not pity.

She was a fractured girl, yes. She was the girl who had dragged herself through fire and blood and silence. But maybe—just maybe these men saw the whole of her, scars and all, and didn’t turn away. Maybe she wasn’t just the shattered girl anymore. Maybe she was something else, too. Wanted. Held. Loved.

Her eyes burned, but no tears fell. She simply breathed, slow and deliberate, letting the weight of their presence stitch some small part of her back together. Even the silence between them seemed to hold her together more securely than any spell she’d ever known.

She did not know when she had finally surrendered to sleep, only that when her eyes fluttered open, soft light was seeping past the green curtains she’d chosen for this room. The morning was warm, almost heavy, and the comforter cocooning her was twisted around unfamiliar limbs. Her breath caught in her throat as the sensation registered—something warm and unmistakably male was pressed against her arse, firm and twitching slightly. She blinked sleep from her lashes and bit her lower lip, the urge to laugh threatening to bubble up.

Carefully, she turned her head. Sirius lay behind her, deeply asleep, his breathing even. His T-shirt had ridden up, revealing a sliver of his stomach, and his dark hair was a wild halo against the pillow. In front of her, Severus had turned during the night, facing her now with his mouth slightly parted in sleep. His lashes, impossibly dark against the pale hollows beneath his eyes, cast faint shadows on his cheeks. She studied his face—so often severe, so rarely at peace—and felt something flicker deep in her chest.

Hermione swallowed thickly, resisting the impulsive urge to reach out and trace the line of his jaw. Instead, she shifted, slow and cautious, disentangling herself from their limbs with the delicacy of a thief in the night. Sirius whimpered softly at the loss of contact, and Severus grunted in mild protest, but neither man stirred. She stood at the foot of the bed, barefoot and in awe.

They reacted to her absence even in sleep. Sirius reached blindly in front of him and found Severus, dragging the man against him with a sleepy arm. Severus nestled into the curve of Sirius’s chest like it was the most natural thing in the world. And just like that, they both settled again, their bodies visibly relaxing. The sight made her heart ache in ways she hadn’t expected. They were both so clearly touch-starved, their need for comfort written into the unconscious way they sought each other.

Maybe... maybe they should sleep like this more often. It had been one of the most restful nights she could recall, despite everything that had preceded it. She sighed and reached for her robe, wrapping it around herself before padding toward the bathroom. By the time she returned, the light had shifted, casting golden bars across the room. Sirius and Severus had moved again—Sirius now had his back to Severus, and Severus had instinctively tucked himself against him, one arm draped loosely over Sirius’s waist.

Something twisted inside Hermione. It wasn’t just affection, or gratitude. It was longing, visceral and deep. These two complicated, wounded men—so different, so alike—had carved space in her life, in her bed, in her heart. And gods help her, she wanted to keep them there.

She crossed the room to her wardrobe and ran her fingers along the line of dresses, finally settling on a white one she’d bought on impulse and never worn. Light and airy, it whispered of spring and the tentative hope she wasn’t quite ready to claim. She glanced once more at the bed. Neither man moved. She hesitated, then made a decision. She dressed without glamouring the scars.

The thin white fabric left the raised line along her collarbone—the one Dolohov had given her at sixteen—visible. The one that had made Ron flinch. Her arms were bare, the word Bellatrix had carved there exposed in its jagged vulgarity. The one Ron had told her to hide. She didn’t cover them. Not today. She had the distinct, unshakable feeling that neither Sirius nor Severus would ask her to.

She eased the door open and slipped out, closing it softly behind her. The corridor was hushed, thick with morning quiet, until she crashed directly into a solid chest. She staggered back and looked up.

George Weasley stood blinking at her in the soft glow of morning light, his ginger hair tousled in every possible direction and the collar of his pyjama top askew. Sleep clung to his expression, dazed and unguarded, but as his gaze met hers—drifting from her unglamoured scars to the dress that swirled gently around her legs—he froze. The pink that bloomed across his cheeks was instant and vivid, catching even in the low light of the hallway.

His mouth opened, then closed, words clearly forming and dying on his tongue before he managed, with an awkward croak, "I... Uf—"

It was not quite a greeting, nor a question, but a flustered exhale of disbelief that made Hermione’s lips twitch with the beginnings of laughter.

Hermione laughed, a light, musical sound, and placed her hand gently on his chest to steady him. "Morning, Georgie. I hope you didn’t have our Chosen One up all night. He’s got that Auror exam today, doesn’t he?"

With a wink and a swish of white skirts, she danced past him, leaving George standing dumbfounded in the hallway, rubbing the back of his neck and wondering just what the hell kind of dream he might still be in.

Grimmauld Place - 2001 - Sirius

Sirius stumbled into the kitchen, still rumpled and half-asleep, his sleep shirt twisted at the collar and his shorts slung low on his hips, revealing the barest hint of the night before written into the shape of his spine and the tousle of his hair. He looked like a man still being tugged backward by dreams—hair pointing in six different directions, stubble scratching at his jaw, and eyes crusted with sleep.

He had woken to the oddly soft pressure of Severus Snape's nose jammed into his cheekbone, the rest of the man a blanket of angles and elbows practically draped over him. For a moment, he had no idea what dimension he was in. Then the memories filtered through like the slow seep of light through closed curtains—Hermione’s nightmare, the screams, her trembling hands clutching both of them in the dark. Her voice, hoarse and frightened, asking them not to leave. Her vulnerability made physical in the way she folded herself between them, needing them both to chase back the horror Bellatrix had carved into her.

Now she was gone, and he was left with the impression of her warmth in the sheets and the confusing comfort of Severus Snape’s steady breath. Sirius had stayed there for a long moment, simply watching. There was something terribly intimate about seeing someone like Severus, all sharp words and sharper eyes, rendered quiet by sleep. The harsh lines of his face smoothed, the pain he carried always at a whisper now utterly absent. Without quite realising what he was doing, Sirius leaned in and pressed a kiss to the tip of the man's crooked nose. The gesture was neither teasing nor mocking, but something gentler—a wordless benediction, a touch that lingered with emotion too complex to name. A ridiculous thing, really, and yet something in him ached with how right it felt.

Merlin’s balls. This was who Sirius was now. Sleeping in beds with Hermione Granger and snogging Severus bloody Snape. And the strangest part? He wanted to do it again. Wanted to kiss Severus in full consciousness and not just on impulse. He grinned to himself. The man even managed to be a grumpy sod in his sleep, muttering something unintelligible and shifting slightly as if chasing warmth.

Sirius slipped out from beneath the blanket, tucking it back around the man with a surprising gentleness. He crept out of the room, letting Severus remain in his undisturbed peace a little longer. No need to wake the brooding bat just yet.

The hallway was dim and cool, and Sirius rubbed a hand down his face as he yawned, trying to remember how his legs worked. In the corridor, Sirius bumped—almost literally—into George, who was emerging from the bathroom with steam still clinging to his skin and water dripping down his chest. George's eyes widened, his mouth opened slightly in astonishment before he managed to find his voice, his tone laced with disbelief and something suspiciously close to amusement.

"Did you just leave Min’s room?" he asked, the question hanging in the air like a lit fuse.

Sirius stretched slowly, his joints cracking in protest, and yawned with dramatic flair, dragging a hand through his unruly hair. He scratched the back of his neck with a sleepy grin tugging at his lips, clearly unbothered by the implication. "Uh huh," he replied with a drawl, cocking an eyebrow at George. "Did my godson have a pleasant evening, then?"

The question was delivered with all the subtlety of a wink, and it did its job. George turned a colour that rivalled a ripe tomato, stumbling over a reply before muttering something unintelligible and darting down the corridor like a boy caught with his hand in a sweets jar. Sirius chuckled under his breath, shaking his head fondly before continuing his descent down the stairs, the scent of bacon and the strains of Bowie drawing him onward.

The kitchen was flooded with golden morning light, and in the centre of it all was Hermione. Spinning in slow, absentminded circles to the rhythm of the music, barefoot, hair tumbling around her shoulders like a halo, and dressed in a white slip of a dress that clung lovingly to her every curve, and, thanks to the way the morning light hit her, turned sheer enough to reveal the lace outlines of her bra and knickers beneath. It should have been indecent. But it wasn’t. It was breathtaking.

Sirius knew he shouldn’t stare—but gods, how could he not? She was radiant, alight with something unspoken, something defiant and free. There was a glow to her that had nothing to do with the sunlight pouring through the windows and everything to do with resilience, with the fact that she was still here, still dancing, still creating joy out of the wreckage. And his heart stuttered in his chest, not just for the way she looked, but because she was there, smiling, cooking, dancing. After everything she had been through.

"Morning, sunshine," she said, her back still turned, flipping a pancake with the kind of expertise that suggested she’d been up far longer than him. She hadn’t needed to look. She’d felt him enter. That knowledge settled warm in his gut.

"Morning, little love," he replied, voice still hoarse, a smile blooming slow and lazy across his face. The affection in it was unhidden, like his heart had simply decided not to keep secrets this morning.

She turned her head just enough to flash him a dazzling smile over her shoulder, and Sirius felt it hit him in the chest like a well-aimed hex. His knees went a bit weak. Her smile was pure sunlight.

She motioned him to sit. He obeyed, flopping into one of the chairs at the table, still a little dazed. A moment later, she set down a plate in front of him with practiced ease—blueberry cream cheese scones, perfectly golden, still steaming, and a stack of heart-shaped pancakes.

He blinked, his stomach swooping. Of course she remembered his favourites. Of course she had made them. She always noticed. Always cared.

He blinked again at the plate, then at her back as she returned to the stove, and something inside him burst into warmth. Without thinking, he got up, crossed the room, and grabbed her by the waist. She gave a startled yelp as he twisted her around and swept her off her feet, literally. His arms went under her thighs, hoisting her up as her legs instinctively locked around his waist. 

He spun her around before either of them could think better of it. The world shifted in a blur of golden morning light, the scent of blueberry scones thick in the air, the warmth of the kitchen wrapping around them like a memory. Her laughter broke through the silence, wild and unrestrained, sharper than any incantation and infinitely more healing. It rang through Grimmauld like a long-forgotten spell—something ancient and joyful, something he hadn’t heard in too many years.

“Sirius! What the hell?” she gasped, breathless and radiant, as he spun them again. Her curls flew around her shoulders in a halo of disarray, cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling in disbelief. She clung to him, not just for balance, but because she could, because in that moment, there was no need for distance, no reason to doubt.

“Blueberry scones,” he replied, grinning like a boy with a secret. He was panting slightly, the words pushed out between deep, chest-filling breaths. “They’re my favourite. James’s mum used to make them every time I stayed over—stacked so high we couldn’t see each other across the table. She said they were my reward for not blowing anything up that week.”

Hermione’s laugh came again, softer this time, but no less full. “I know,” she murmured, resting her forehead briefly against his. “You told us once—Christmas break, fifth year. I remembered. That’s why I made them.” Her voice was quieter now, tinged with something warm and unnameable.

Sirius slowed to a stop, their breathing still fast and shallow, the giddiness of the moment trailing behind them like ribbon. He settled her carefully onto the edge of the kitchen counter, keeping his hands braced on either side of her hips, caging her in without pressure, only presence. She didn’t move. Didn’t pull away. Her thighs parted slightly to accommodate him, the hem of her thin dress brushing against his lower abdomen with the lightness of a whisper. She tilted her head up to look at him, eyes wide and unguarded beneath damp lashes, and the air between them thickened with something far weightier than flour or steam.

He leaned in slowly, brushing his nose against her temple. His voice was barely a breath, but it reached into the centre of her like a promise. “You, little love, are a fucking miracle.”

She giggled, the sound slipping out like a secret, and her fingers slid into the ends of his tangled hair where it curled against the nape of his neck. She didn’t speak, not at first, just smiled—slow and luminous and devastating. He wanted to catalogue that smile, store it away like treasure. He wanted to drown in the sound of her laughter, to etch it into the walls of this broken house and let it chase out the ghosts.

“I know all of my boys’ favourites,” she said finally, and her voice was quiet, but full of something that wrapped itself around his ribs and pulled tight. There was pride in her voice, a quiet affection threaded through every syllable, and an intimacy that went deeper than anything Sirius had known in years. She looked up at him with such steady warmth that he felt himself unravel a little.

He wasn’t a boy. Hadn’t been one in years. Not since Azkaban, not since war. But when she said it like that, when she looked at him like that, he felt younger. Softer. Like someone who could still be loved. Like someone who was hers.

His eyes dropped, drawn to the neckline of her dress. The white fabric was delicate, and for the first time, she had not cloaked herself in glamour. The scar on her collarbone was visible, raised and pale against the softness of her skin. It shimmered faintly in the morning light, not hidden, not shamed. He stared, not in horror, but in reverence. The mark Dolohov had left on her had nearly taken her life. He knew the spell. He’d seen what it did. The fact that she bore it still, and had chosen to bare it openly this morning—it wrecked him. He wanted to kneel.

He leaned in, lips brushing against the ruined skin like an oath. It wasn’t a kiss of desire, though he desired her fiercely. It was something deeper. He pressed his mouth against her scar with the kind of reverence reserved for altars and ashes, a benediction of breath and quiet fury. She trembled, a soft intake of breath hitching against his chest, but she didn’t pull away. He stayed there a moment, breathing her in, memorising the shape of her strength.

“You never need to hide from me,” he whispered into her skin, the words shaped more by ache than sound. “Never again, little love.”

When he finally pulled back, her gaze found his at once. There were tears there, unfallen, but shimmering like starlight. She looked at him with something fragile and full, something that buckled his knees from the inside out. Then she kissed him.

It was not a kiss of apology. Not one of pity or thanks. It was slow, deliberate, deep. It shattered every boundary they had not spoken, crumbled every wall he had built to survive. She kissed him like he was someone who mattered. Like he was worth saving. Like she had known all along that he could still be touched and not shatter.

And Sirius—reckless, ruined Sirius—kissed her back like a man who had found something worth surviving for. Something worth staying for. Something worth unmaking himself entirely, just to keep.

He rested his forehead against hers, arms still wrapped firmly around her waist. He didn’t want to let her go, not now, not when the morning light had carved something soft and sacred between them. Her breath mingled with his, warm and steady. He tilted his head slightly, voice low and teasing.

“So, tell me, little love,” he murmured, brushing his nose gently against hers, “what does the Bat of Grimmauld like?”

Hermione snorted, a sound of genuine amusement that made his heart squeeze. “Don’t act like you don’t like him, Sirius Black.”

She pulled back just enough to swat his chest lightly, but she didn’t move away from his arms. Sirius grinned, all teeth and mischief, but there was fondness brimming behind it. He did like the old grumpy bastard, and they both knew it.

“Don’t you dare tell him I said this,” Hermione whispered conspiratorially, her eyes darting to the doorway like Severus might be lurking just around the corner. “But he has the biggest sweet tooth of all of us. If you really want to make him melt—and I mean, full-on soft-eyed, stunned-into-silence—give him raspberry chocolate muffins.”

Sirius arched an eyebrow and leaned back slightly as if considering a great secret. “Raspberry chocolate muffins, you say... hmm...”

Before she could say anything else, his eyes flicked past her shoulder, catching movement near the hallway. A wicked grin slowly unfurled across Sirius’s face, the kind of expression that had once promised trouble in the halls of Hogwarts and now hinted at something softer beneath the mischief.

He leaned ever so slightly to the side, gaze fixed on the figure in the doorway with barely contained glee. “Morning, Sevy,” he called out, voice smooth and far too innocent to be trusted. “Sleep well, did you?”

Hermione let out a strangled squeak and shoved Sirius back with both hands, leaping off the counter and nearly knocking over the plate of scones. Her curls bounced wildly as she scrambled to compose herself, smoothing her dress with nervous hands.

Severus sat in his wheelchair just outside the kitchen, watching them with a dry expression that didn’t quite hide the soft curve tugging at the edge of his mouth. Sirius noticed it immediately—the way Severus was looking at them. There was fondness in his eyes, a glimmer of bemusement softening the sharp angles of his usual scowl. Maybe even a little bit amused.

And yes, though he would never say it aloud, Sirius thought it looked just the tiniest bit goofy.

Grimmauld Place - 2001 - Severus

Severus had awoken well before Sirius stirred, the hush of Hermione’s bedroom holding a quiet that seemed sacred in its stillness. He lay there for long minutes, unmoving save for the occasional shallow breath, his spine throbbing dully beneath him while his legs, lifeless as ever, felt both heavy and distant. He hadn’t expected sleep to find him—not in a house full of ghosts, not in a room not his own, not with two bodies pressed in beside him. And yet, slumber had come anyway. Deep, warm, and—against all reason—comforting. He had not slept like that in over a decade.

His eyes fluttered open for a heartbeat as Sirius shifted beside him. The faint change in breathing, the barely-there twitch of fingers, the subtle tension of someone hovering on the edge of waking—all of it familiar. Severus shut his eyes again before they could meet, choosing the protection of feigned sleep. The mattress dipped under shifting weight. A soft rustle of linen broke the hush, and then came a ghost of a touch. Lips brushed the bridge of his nose—barely a whisper of contact, light enough that he might have imagined it.

But he hadn’t. And something twisted deep inside him, not pain exactly, not irritation either, but something older and rawer. He remained perfectly still, determined not to react. There was more rustling, the tug of a blanket being drawn up over his shoulders, and then the creak of a door opening and closing. And silence.

When he opened his eyes again, morning had broken. Pale light filtered through the curtain gaps, casting a diffused glow over the crumpled sheets and the dented pillows on either side of him. He sighed, slow and brittle, and turned his face toward the ceiling. Everything ached—the persistent dull pain at the base of his spine, the tension coiled in his neck—but still, there was a strange sense of peace clinging to his limbs. The sleep had been real, and it had been good. Better than he deserved.

With effort, he swung his legs off the bed and reached for the wheelchair stationed nearby. His movements were slow but practiced, the mechanics of it ingrained into muscle memory. As he settled into the chair, his gaze drifted back toward the bed. The sheets Hermione had slept beneath were tangled, still warm. Something beneath his sternum stirred—not longing, not quite. Something quieter. Something dangerous.

He wheeled himself down the dim corridor, making for his own room. The bathroom off Hermione’s bedroom, while serviceable, lacked the modifications he required. As he turned the corner, he nearly collided with George and Harry.

George raised a brow, his expression a mixture of amusement and barely restrained curiosity. He stood with arms loosely crossed, his weight shifted slightly to one hip as though he’d just arrived but intended to linger. Opposite him, Harry looked as if someone had just punched the breath out of his lungs. His green eyes were round with some dawning realisation he clearly hadn’t wanted to have, and he seemed stuck between sputtering a question or retreating altogether.

“Why is everyone coming out of Hermione’s room?” George asked, his tone deceptively casual though his gaze remained sharp and watchful.

Harry’s head snapped toward him, the words clearly taking root. “Who else came out?” he asked, voice caught somewhere between dread and disbelief.

“Sirius,” George replied without hesitation, as if stating the weather, though his lips twitched at the corners like he knew exactly how explosive that word would be.

Harry’s eyes grew even wider—impossibly so—and Severus, for his part, could only scoff, the sound dry and brittle as cracked parchment. He was tired. His body ached. His patience wore thinner by the hour.

“We all slept together,” he said flatly, his tone clipped and wry. “Deal with it.”

He left them blinking in the hallway as he continued toward his room, the corners of his mouth tugging slightly. Let them stew.

Inside his bathroom, the water ran hot and steady. Steam curled against the mirror as he undressed and settled onto the shower bench. He tilted his head back and let the stream hit the back of his neck, washing away the residue of dreams and discomfort. One hand braced against the cool tile while the other rested in his lap. The water could not undo what was broken, but it grounded him, brought him back to the edges of himself.

Later, as he pulled on the dark jeans and reached for the burgundy jumper Hermione had insisted on buying him—a shade too warm for his taste but softer than anything he'd have chosen for himself—he paused with the wool halfway down his chest. His gaze fell to the jagged scar that bisected the pale skin above his heart, and his fingers, long and precise, ghosted over it with a reverence he would never admit aloud. It was an old wound, but not a forgotten one. A souvenir of adolescence soaked in betrayal and bone-deep terror. Fangs, fury, and the cruelty of teenage boys playing gods with monsters. The night he had been lured to the Shrieking Shack uncoiled in his memory like a serpent. The creaking floorboards, the dust swirling in stale moonlight, the scent of fur and blood and fear all returned with staggering clarity. He had stood there—sixteen, furious, terrified—waiting for an answer that turned out to be a trap. Laughter, cruel and careless, echoed from a boy who had never grasped the weight of his actions. And then the dog, monstrous and wild-eyed, bounding toward him with teeth bared and death etched into every line of its form. That moment—Sirius’s betrayal made flesh—had never really stopped happening.

His breath hissed sharply through his nose as he traced the gnarled edge, the memory coming back as vivid as if the teeth had sunk in only yesterday. He remembered the panic, the humiliation, the raw scrape of betrayal when it had all unravelled. That Sirius—the reckless boy who had weaponised a friend’s curse for sport, who had nearly killed him and called it a joke—was gone. Dead and buried beneath years, war, and ruin.

And yet, the echo of him remained.

It lingered in the shape of the scar and in the shadow of Severus’s pride. It whispered at the edge of moments like this—moments that felt too gentle, too kind, too unearned. Because now, Sirius was different. He moved through rooms with the weight of consequence etched into his spine. He carried Severus to bed when he fell asleep in armchairs. He kissed his nose without permission or shame. He made tea when Severus couldn’t lift the kettle.

There was something maddening about the quiet gentleness Sirius had begun to wield like a second skin. It disarmed Severus in ways he could not brace against, cutting through years of calloused defences and bitter expectation. That warmth—unguarded and infuriatingly sincere—stirred things he did not wish to name, let alone feel. It disrupted the order he had so carefully rebuilt, left him adrift in moments that felt perilously like hope. It unnerved him, deeply, to be seen so clearly and still touched with such reverence, as if he hadn’t been shaped by war and regret.

They were not boys anymore. But pain had a long half-life, and memory—especially the kind forged in blood—did not fade so easily.

He pulled the jumper down slowly, covering the scar again, though he could still feel it burning beneath the wool. A ghost under his skin. A reminder of everything that was—and everything that might never be again.

He wheeled his way through Grimmauld’s narrow halls, navigating around crates of half-dismantled furniture and rugs that refused to lay flat. When he reached the kitchen, the door was ajar. Laughter filtered out—a melodic hum of voices, familiar and threaded with something dangerously soft.

“So, tell me, little love, what does the Bat of Grimmauld like?” Sirius’s voice drifted through the kitchen, thick with playfulness and something softer threaded beneath it, something warmer than mockery. 

Hermione’s response came almost immediately, laced with affection and a barely concealed grin. “Don’t act like you don’t like him, Sirius Black.” Her voice held a teasing edge of its own, the familiarity between them drawn in strokes both bold and tender.

The silence that followed was not empty. It pulsed with unsaid things—the history of a bond reshaped, the weight of glances exchanged in quiet moments, and the undeniable shift in how they occupied space around each other. Breath mingled, not quite touching, not quite parted.

When Sirius finally spoke again, his voice was lower, thoughtful in a way that still carried a hint of amusement. “Raspberry chocolate muffins, you say... hmm...” The words hung in the air like a promise, curling with the scent of baking sugar and the subtle crackle of morning tension yet to break.

Severus pushed the door open and wheeled himself inside. Morning light bathed the kitchen in warmth. Hermione sat on the kitchen counter, legs bare beneath the hem of her white dress, which spilled around her like spilled cream. Her feet swung idly, toes brushing against the cupboard doors, and her hair was a wild halo around her flushed face. Sirius stood between her knees, one hand on her waist, the other lightly brushing her thigh as he leaned in with a lazy, intimate grin that promised mischief and memory. They were wrapped in their own small world, a moment suspended in morning light and the unspoken tenderness of familiarity.

Sirius’s gaze caught his the moment Severus entered the kitchen, and a slow grin spread across his face—broad, unabashed, and steeped in the kind of teasing familiarity that left Severus bristling on instinct. There was something boyishly smug in the way he held Severus’s gaze, like a cat who had not only caught the canary but intended to make a performance of it.

“Morning, Sevy,” Sirius drawled with saccharine warmth, tilting his head in exaggerated fashion, as though he were an overgrown mutt waiting for a scratch behind the ears. “Sleep well, did you?”

The words hung between them, thick with implication, and were punctuated by a startled little sound from Hermione—a squeak mixed with a soft sigh. She scrambled from the counter in a flurry of pale limbs and wild curls, nearly sending a plate of food clattering to the floor in her haste. Her feet hit the floor with a muted thud, but it was the colour blooming across her cheeks that Severus noticed first, rising with all the urgency of a fire alarm.

Severus cleared his throat, willing his heart to slow. She looked beautiful, and he hated that the word came so easily to him now. Morning light kissed her skin, and her lips—those lips—were pink and curved in something close to mischief.

His voice, when it emerged, felt like a thread drawn from deep water—low, rough, but steady enough to hold. “I did,” he said after a beat, then added with a reluctant nod, “Yes.”

Sirius chuckled, the sound rich with mischief, and sauntered across the room with the unhurried ease of someone who had long ago stopped asking permission to exist loudly. “Hermione made breakfast,” he announced, pride colouring the words as though he had done something noble by proximity. Without missing a beat, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to Severus’s head—soft and shameless, as natural as breathing.

He remained still beneath the contact, his body betraying none of the startled instinct he might have shown once. There was no recoil, no shifting away from the warmth, only a quiet acceptance that felt as foreign as it was unsettling. He merely allowed himself to be rolled forward to the table, where a plate had already been set.

“Morning, Severus,” Hermione said gently, her voice soft with affection as she placed a dish in front of him. The plate was almost too much—heart-shaped pancakes dusted with powdered sugar, blueberry scones still steaming faintly, and a drizzle of honey trailing across the edges. He stared down at them, momentarily stunned by the intimacy of such a gesture, by the way it reached past his carefully erected boundaries and touched something more fragile.

And then she leaned down and kissed his cheek.

The brush of her lips against his skin was light, almost reverent, but it sent a jolt through him nonetheless. He blinked, startled by the warmth blooming just beneath his ribs. Before she could step back, before he could overthink it, he reached for her with uncharacteristic boldness. One arm wrapped around her waist and tugged gently, insistently, until she landed in his lap with a startled yelp that turned into laughter. Her arms looped instinctively around his shoulders, and she settled against him as if she belonged there.

“Hi,” he said, his voice low and careful, as if speaking too loudly might break the spell between them. His gaze roamed her face, lingering on the flush rising in her cheeks and the gentle curve of her lips.

She looked at him, eyes soft and uncertain, and smiled—a smile that came from somewhere deep, where shyness and hope met. “Hi.”

His fingers, resting at her waist, tightened ever so slightly as he held her. “You look very beautiful today, little witch,” he murmured. Each word was deliberate, grounded in something old and unspoken. Not charm. Not flattery. Just truth.

The colour in her cheeks deepened, blooming down her neck in waves of pink. She ducked her head slightly, the sweep of her lashes casting delicate shadows across her flushed cheeks as she whispered, “Thank you,” voice barely more than breath, yet thick with meaning.

Severus caught movement from the corner of his eye and turned to see Sirius watching them over the rim of his coffee cup. The bastard was smirking, his mouth half-hidden, but the laughter lines creasing the corners of his eyes gave him away. That look—equal parts amusement and fondness—irritated Severus more than he cared to admit. Still, he leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to the side of Hermione’s neck, delighting in the shiver it earned and the bright giggle that spilled from her lips. He held her just a moment longer before releasing her with a quiet sigh, letting her return to her place at the table.

As they began to eat, Sirius’s voice cut through the comfortable clink of cutlery and rustle of napkins. “I have a serious question,” he declared, tone far too measured to be anything but mischievous.

Severus arched a brow, sceptical and already suspicious of the coming nonsense.

Sirius didn’t miss a beat. “Did anyone else see Georgie leave Harry’s room this morning, or have I completely dreamt that?”

And that was it. The absurdity of it all—the morning, the insinuation, Sirius’s maddening grin—was too much. Severus, despite himself, began to laugh. Not a scoff or a chuckle, but a true, startled laugh that curled out of his chest and filled the kitchen like something long forgotten.

Grimmauld Place - 2001 - Hermione

Hermione was alone in her study when the silvery blur of antlers filled the room with a sudden, ethereal light. She turned from her parchment just in time to watch Harry’s stag Patronus emerge from the far wall, hooves clattering faintly against nothing, voice bright and crackling with excitement. “I’ve passed the exam! Called George, Percy, Lav, and Luna over for dinner tonight. I’ll be home in half an hour.”

The moment the words faded, the stag dissolved into glittering wisps, vanishing into the air like steam. Hermione stood there for a beat, the smile blooming across her lips far too big to contain. Her heart swelled with fierce pride. He’d done it. Her Harry—her brother in all but blood—was a full Auror at last.

She slipped out of the study with a bounce in her step, a soft whistle trailing from her lips as she wandered through the halls of Grimmauld Place. The house was too quiet, save for the occasional groan of shifting pipes or the whisper of portraits behind their curtains. She searched room by room, poking her head into the drawing room, the music parlour, even the sunroom where Sirius sometimes used to sulk with a whisky when he was trapped here during the war. But it wasn’t until she pushed open the door to the library that she found them.

Severus and Sirius were hunched over a wide book on the reading table, deep in what appeared to be an argument that had long since abandoned civility and entered the realm of theatrical exasperation. Their heads were bent close, the tension between them almost comically academic.

Severus was stabbing at a page with his finger, face twisted in annoyance, voice sharp. “It clearly states the reduction must occur prior to the second infusion or the base destabilises. This is basic alchemical process.”

Sirius snorted and shook his head, one hand flapping dismissively. “No, no—bollocks. James and I proved that was utter shite in sixth year. I’m telling you, that bloody book is wrong.”

Hermione leaned against the doorway, folding her arms as she watched them bicker like a pair of very cranky scholars. There was something deeply endearing about the way Severus’s eyes narrowed and Sirius’s eyebrows bounced as he gestured wildly. They looked utterly ridiculous, like two cantankerous professors trapped in an endless debate—but there was something so comfortingly recognisable in it, a domestic chaos that had become hers as much as theirs. That absurdity, that squabbling harmony between them, was now a fixture of her daily life. It reminded her of warmth, of shared battles and uneasy peace, of things mended after breaking. In its ridiculousness, it was comforting. It was familiar in ways she never expected. It was home in the truest sense of the word.

She recalled Severus once telling her—back when Sirius was still half-draped between life and death after being yanked from the Veil—that if the mutt had given even one percent more attention to his studies, he would’ve surpassed nearly every student in their year. But Sirius had been too distracted by pranks and girls—or boys, depending on the month. Still, he’d managed eleven O.W.L.s, most with Outstanding or Exceeds Expectations, and eight N.E.W.T.s to match. She’d been shocked. She had ten O.W.L.s, seven N.E.W.T.s, and still spent most of her life feeling behind. That Sirius had been capable of such brilliance—and that the world had chewed him up and spat him into Azkaban before he could do anything with it—struck her, suddenly and sharply, as unbearably cruel.

Sirius threw his arms skyward with theatrical frustration, glaring at the book as though it had insulted his lineage. “F ine, then. Bloody hell. I’ll brew the damned thing myself if that’s what it takes to finally shut you up.” His voice was loud, indignant, and entirely too full of pride for someone conceding defeat.

Severus exhaled slowly, the long-suffering sigh of a man who had weathered one too many of these verbal storms. He folded his arms in front of him with the solemnity of a magistrate awaiting inevitable disaster. “And just how, exactly, do you intend to manage that, Pet?” he asked, voice dry as dust.

Hermione blinked, a quiet flutter of surprise skimming through her chest as the word "Pet" slipped from Severus’s lips—a new endearment, one not yet worn in by repetition. She doubted he even realised he'd said it, but it struck her nonetheless, soft and unexpected. Sirius, entirely oblivious, launched back into the argument without missing a beat. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” he barked in return, voice pitched for maximum drama as he flung his arms wide again. “But I’ll figure it out. I always do. Even if it means reducing the entire bloody cellar to rubble in the process.”

Severus tilted his head and raised one impeccably sardonic eyebrow. “Excellent. When the foundation crumbles and we’re all singed bald, I’ll be sure to point the Ministry toward you.”

Hermione cleared her throat, the sound precise and pointed, slicing cleanly through the rising din of magical male ego.

Both men turned in unison, mid-spat, and when they spotted her, their expressions softened in an instant. Sirius grinned and opened his arms as if to say, finally, someone sane has arrived. “Good, little love,” he said. “Come settle something for us.”

Severus’s tone was iron-flat, his gaze flicking to Sirius with withering disapproval. “No. You brew the damn thing. Do not drag her into this.”

Hermione shook her head with a fond sigh, stepping deeper into the room and lowering herself into the nearest armchair. She tucked her feet beneath her and offered them both a bemused smile. “You two are absolutely hopeless.”

With the familiar arrogance of a man who took pride in it, Sirius spun toward Severus and jabbed a finger at his chest. “Stubborn bat,” he declared, his grin sharp and eyes glinting with mischief.

Severus didn’t even flinch at the contact. He met Sirius’s gaze with slow, deliberate menace. “Poke me again,” he warned, “and I will bite that finger.”

Rather than retreat, Sirius batted his lashes with theatrical glee, his voice dropping to a feline purr. “Promise?”

The only answer he received was a long-suffering exhale as Severus shook his head and muttered, “You’re insufferable.” But despite the scolding tone, his mouth had curved into something warm, something unguarded—and the rare, unclouded smile blooming across his face made Hermione’s chest tighten with something she couldn’t quite name. It felt like sunlight through frosted glass. Like watching wounds knit closed beneath skin. It made her ache in the best possible way.

Clearing her throat once more, Hermione folded her hands in her lap and glanced between the two men , her voice quiet but edged with something almost reverent. “Harry passed,” she said, her words hanging softly in the air between them. “He just sent a Patronus. He’s on his way home now. We’re having dinner together tonight, with George, Percy, Lavender, and Luna.”

Sirius’s reaction was immediate, the grin blooming across his face so wide it nearly split him in two. “Way to go, Pup,” he said, and though the words were casual, his voice cracked slightly around the edges—rough with pride and something deeper beneath.

Beside him, Severus inclined his head with quiet solemnity. “Impressive,” he murmured, and though it was only one word, the weight of it was unmistakable. It was respect. Genuine, unguarded, and rare.

Hermione’s gaze dropped to her lap as her fingers found an invisible thread on the hem of her dress, tugging at it as though unravelling it might steady her nerves. She twisted her hands together, the gesture small and uncertain, before finally speaking—her voice low, hesitant but hopeful. “I was thinking… maybe we could get that red velvet cake he likes. From the bakery a few streets down. And maybe those peanut butter cups and cinnamon swirls, too?”

Sirius’s face lit up with approval, his grey eyes twinkling with mischief and warmth. “That,” he declared, “is an excellent idea. And as it happens, Severus was just saying he needed to stretch his wheels. Perfect excuse.”

He didn’t wait for either permission or protest. With a smooth motion, he rolled Severus’s chair a few inches closer to where Hermione sat and stepped back with a grin that was far too pleased with itself.

Severus looked ready to object, his mouth opening with what was likely the beginning of a lecture on decorum and unnecessary outings—but then his eyes met Hermione’s. Whatever resistance had lived there evaporated in the quiet space between them. His shoulders relaxed, his mouth softened, and something tender passed through his expression like a ripple across still water. “I would love to go with you, little witch,” he said, voice softer than usual, but certain.

Hermione’s face brightened instantly, the weight she hadn’t realised she’d been carrying lifting just enough to let her smile feel unburdened. “Maybe we can get ice cream too?” she asked, her voice coloured now with shy excitement.

Severus reached for her hand and enclosed it gently in his own, his fingers warm against hers. “Whatever you want,” he said, meeting her gaze without hesitation. “It’s your celebration too.”

Borough of Islington, London - 2001 - Severus

His little witch hadn’t waited a moment. The second he agreed, she was already slipping on her denim jacket and slinging her bag over one shoulder, a spark of purpose lighting her face. Together, they left the shadowed cool of 12 Grimmauld Place behind and stepped into the bright bustle of Islington. The street buzzed with life—late spring sunlight warming the pavements, children shrieking with glee from the nearby park, and commuters weaving around them like river currents.

Hermione pushed his chair with familiar ease, chatting animatedly as they moved. She launched into a discussion about a new project she was consulting on—a joint initiative with the Australian Department of Mysteries. It focused on developing a potential cure for psychosis caused by long-term exposure to the Cruciatus Curse, and a regenerative potion for advanced nerve damage resulting from the same. Her voice, filled with passion and urgency, poured out like a stream too full to dam. Severus listened with a quiet pride he never voiced. Her mind—brilliant, relentless—sometimes overwhelmed him with its sheer fire.

In ten minutes, they reached the HoneyCake Shop, its pastel awnings casting soft shadows over the window display. They placed an order for a red velvet cake with a strawberry and chocolate filling, and picked up two boxes of peanut butter cups and cinnamon rolls. The woman behind the counter told them the cake would take an hour to prepare, so they moved into the adjoining café.

Hermione ordered the most absurd milkshake on the menu—a towering monstrosity crowned with whipped cream, sprinkles, and a slice of actual cake teetering on top. Severus, ever the minimalist, chose a plain chocolate milkshake. He opened his mouth, ready to make a comment about sugar content or dietary discretion, but Hermione beat him to it. She took one extravagant sip, closed her eyes, moaned with exaggerated bliss, and did a little shimmy in her seat that made him forget whatever lecture he’d been preparing. Her joy was infectious. He shut up and let himself enjoy the moment.

They talked about everything and nothing—potion theory, bookshop owners, magical law reform, the horror of enchanted furniture—and through it all, a thorn lodged itself deeper into Severus’s thoughts. How, he wondered, had he ever treated this remarkable young woman with such disdain? How could he have looked at this brilliant, passionate, compassionate creature and called her insufferable? She had once matched, perhaps even surpassed, his own obsessive hunger for knowledge. She had approached the world the same way he had—with a desperation to understand it, shape it, survive it. And he had mocked her for it. He had thrown cruelty at her in place of recognition. The shame of it made him want to roll himself into the nearest wall—or straight into the Thames—just to silence the gnawing ache.

Their order was finally called, breaking the spiral. Hermione bounced up from her chair, radiant with excitement, and collected the cake and boxes from the counter. They ducked into the alleyway behind the shop so she could perform the necessary charms—shrinking the parcels and layering them with stasis spells. As she slipped the final container into her enchanted bag, she turned to him with a grin.

Severus arched a brow, his voice dry and laced with that signature edge of condescension he wielded with surgical precision. “You’re aware, of course, that using an extension charm like that is illegal.”

Hermione’s response came with the kind of unapologetic defiance that had become her trademark. She gave a nonchalant shrug, her expression dancing somewhere between mischief and pride. “So was dragging a dead man back from beyond the Veil,” she replied breezily. “But that didn’t stop us either.”

He snorted but said nothing as she wheeled him out of the alleyway. Their next stop was Udderlicious Ice Cream, where Hermione all but ransacked the shop. She ordered tubs of nearly every flavour, much to the cashier’s horror and Severus’s dry amusement.

“It’s still early,” she said, checking her watch. “How about a scoop each in the park? It’s too lovely a day not to enjoy it.”

All Severus could manage was a quiet, “Alright.” He opted for Cookies & Cream, while Hermione predictably chose Chocolate Peanut Butter. No surprise there—she and Sirius shared a reckless obsession with the stuff.

Once more, they ducked into the alleyway for Hermione to shrink the tubs and tuck them into her bag. Then they rolled on to the park, where they found a bench tucked beneath a blossoming dogwood tree, away from the busiest paths. Hermione perched on the bench, and Severus remained beside her in his chair. The world was filtered through birdsong and sun-dappled breeze, and for a few precious minutes, the air between them was still.

Hermione giggled suddenly, leaning toward him. Her thumb reached out and brushed the corner of his mouth with surprising intimacy.

“You’ve got some ice cream,” she said, her voice laced with amusement. Then, without thinking, she slipped her thumb between her lips to clean it.

The sight made Severus suck in a breath so sharp it caught painfully in his throat. Something about her—this tender, casual sensuality—sent a jolt straight through him. And he realised, not for the first time, just how completely she had undone him.

She leaned in, slow and deliberate, the scent of chocolate and spring clinging to her skin. Her breath ghosted across the shell of his ear before her nose brushed against it with featherlight boldness. "I would like to kiss you now, if you are okay with that," she whispered, her voice laced with a tenderness that unravelled him further.

A strangled groan escaped him before he could stop it, low and ragged and entirely undignified. Bloody fuckering fuck. More than okay didn’t begin to cover it. His brain was a blur of half-formed pleas, a riot of words he couldn’t say aloud—Please, for the love of all things holy, kiss me, woman. Now. Before I lose what’s left of myself.

Without a word, he flung his half-eaten ice cream behind him, a clumsy arc that splattered somewhere out of sight. Hermione burst into another of those joy-filled giggles that made his chest ache in the most bewildering way. He caught her wrist, warm and solid beneath his touch, and gave it the gentlest tug, coaxing her to rise.

She stood and moved to the space between his legs, his useless legs, as he tilted his head back to look at her. The sunlight caught in her curls, and she was suddenly the most breathtaking thing he had ever seen. Another tug, another breathless moment—and she climbed onto his lap, straddling him like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Magic shimmered in the air as she lifted her hand with graceful ease, casting a notice-me-not and a Muggle-repelling charm without so much as a whisper. The silent pulse of her magic settled over them like a warm shroud. It struck him with awe—how powerful she was, how entirely in control.

And then he reached for her, one hand on her waist, the other cradling the back of her head as he pulled her down to him. He kissed her with everything he didn’t know how to say—with longing, guilt, wonder, and desperate gratitude. He kissed her like she was oxygen, and he’d been suffocating for years. But it didn’t stop there. The kiss deepened quickly, an ache rising between them that neither could pretend away. Hermione responded with a soft gasp, her fingers sliding up to thread through his hair, tugging gently at the roots as she tilted her head to meet him more fully. He angled his mouth against hers, exploring the taste of chocolate and peanut butter, the familiar echo of ice cream clinging to her lips.

Severus’s hands moved without hesitation—one splayed across her lower back, holding her steady in his lap, the other sliding up to cradle her jaw. Her body pressed closer, curves molding to him with a trust that shook him to his core. She kissed him back with unrestrained hunger, nipping at his lower lip before soothing the sting with her tongue, and gods, he felt dizzy with it—dizzy with her.

Their breaths grew louder, mingling in the warm air as she shifted slightly, her thighs tightening around his hips. His pulse thundered in his ears, his magic crackling just under his skin, pulled taut by the weight of her affection, her confidence, the absolute wonder that she wanted him. Wanted this. Wanted them.

When they finally broke apart, it was with swollen lips and flushed cheeks, both panting like they’d run a marathon. Hermione rested her forehead against his, eyes fluttering shut, and he couldn’t help the quiet chuckle that left him.

"Well," she murmured, smiling against his mouth, "that was long overdue."

He exhaled a soft laugh, brushing her curls away from her face with reverent fingers. "You have no idea," he murmured, still breathless, still reeling.

In that fragile hush, with her forehead resting against his and the taste of her still clinging to his lips, he felt the truth settle heavily in his bones. Both she and Sirius—brilliant, maddening, incandescent beings—would be the death of him. But if that was his fate, if their fire was what consumed him in the end, then so be it. He’d burn gladly. 

Grimmauld Place - 2001 - Sirius

The moment the front door of Grimmauld Place thudded shut behind Hermione and Severus, Sirius surged from his chair in the library with the force of a man who had been holding back a tidal wave. His limbs, twitchy with nervous energy, carried him swiftly down the corridor to the floo room, where he paced in tight, restless circles. The old fireplace groaned as green flame burst to life—and finally, blessedly, Harry stepped through, lugging two crinkling paper bags that smelled like fried magic and something spicy.

Sirius didn’t wait for greetings or pleasantries. He grabbed Harry by the forearm, nearly making the younger man drop the bags, and began dragging him without explanation through the corridor.

“I need your help with something,” Sirius said, his voice tight with a strange mix of excitement and nerves that crackled between them like static. His hand gripped Harry’s arm, not unkindly but with a pressure that said this mattered more than either of them fully understood.

Harry stumbled as Sirius pulled him along, nearly missing a step, yet he couldn’t suppress the grin that tugged at his lips. “Whoa—where’s the fire, Padfoot?” he asked, laughing as they bounded down the stairs in a tangle of footfalls and urgency, the old house creaking around them like it too wanted to know what had ignited this sudden storm.

They landed in the kitchen, the bright space echoing with their footfalls and the low hum of magic from the newly installed breakfast bar. The scent of basil, old wood polish, and fresh paint lingered, all remnants of Hermione’s relentless remodelling. As soon as Harry set the bags on the counter, Sirius rounded on him.

“I need you to help me make raspberry chocolate muffins,” Sirius said, the words tumbling out in a rush, as if by speaking them quickly enough, he could outrun the weight of what they meant.

Harry blinked, taken aback by the strange urgency behind the request. “Wait—what?” he asked, eyebrows lifting.

Sirius stood rooted in place, shoulders tense, hands twitching at his sides. “You heard me,” he repeated, quieter now, but no less intense.

Harry tilted his head, confusion etched across his face. “Why muffins?”

Sirius dragged his fingers through his tangled hair, pacing in tight, uneven circles as if movement alone could make sense of the emotions roiling inside him. His boots scuffed against the tiled floor with impatient energy. “Because they’re the Bat’s favourite,” he muttered, jerking a thumb vaguely toward the ceiling as if Severus might be lurking up there like some brooding gargoyle.

Harry blinked, the nickname taking a moment to settle in before understanding dawned. “The Bat?” he echoed, cautiously.

“Snape, Harry. Bloody Severus Snape,” Sirius confirmed, his tone a strange mix of exasperation and something gentler, more weighted. The name hung in the air like the taste of bittersweet chocolate—familiar, sharp, and oddly tender.

Harry stared at him, the frown between his brows deepening as he tried to bridge the gap between what Sirius was saying and what it might actually mean. “You want to make Snape’s favourite muffins… why?”

Sirius halted mid-step, the air in his lungs catching like a hiccup of fear and longing. He hesitated, lips parting as he ran the tip of his tongue over them, tasting nothing but nerves and dryness. “Because I kissed him,” he confessed, the words dragging over gravel in his throat. “During his panic attack. I didn’t plan it. But I did. And I liked it. I liked it more than I should have.”

He resumed pacing, the energy crackling off him in erratic bursts as his thoughts outran his mouth. “And this morning, Hermione kissed me. Gods, she kissed me like she meant it. And I kissed her back. And I liked that, too. I like her—I’ve always liked her—but now it’s more. It’s all more. I like both of them, Harry. I’m not even sure what that means. I just know I don’t want to stop.”

His voice frayed at the edges as he stopped again, turning to Harry with eyes wild and hands flailing helplessly. “Fuck, Harry—it’s all a bleeding mess.”

Harry opened his mouth, words clearly forming, then faltered. His lips closed again, leaving only a furrowed brow and a look caught somewhere between disbelief and deep concern.

Sirius didn’t notice. He was already halfway through his next confession. “I want to kiss both of them again. At the same time. Individually. However they’ll have me. And I’m pretty sure they want each other too. I’ve seen the way she looks at him. Like he’s someone who matters. Like he’s worthy. She looks at me the same way, and I—” He broke off, inhaling sharply, his voice barely a whisper now. “I want that. I want to belong. To both of them.”

Sirius slumped into one of the kitchen chairs as though the weight of the confession had finally dragged him down, his spine bowed and his elbows braced on the table’s edge. His fingers clawed into the roots of his hair, not in pain, but with the desperate, unconscious hope that if he held himself tightly enough, he wouldn’t fly apart. He was breathing too hard, chest hitching under the swell of feelings that refused to be named. But his voice, when it came, was low and raw.

“Help me, Pup.”

For a long moment, the kitchen was still. Only the hum of the charmed pantry and the faint ticking of the wall clock filled the quiet. Then Harry let out a breath that hovered between a laugh and a sigh, the sound thick with reluctant understanding. His gaze settled on Sirius—wide-eyed, overwhelmed, impossibly vulnerable—and softened.

“Alright,” he murmured, shaking his head, lips curling into a smile that was more fond than mocking. “Let’s go make your man’s favourite muffins.”

Sirius lifted his head, a ghost of a grin tugging at his mouth despite the chaos still storming behind his eyes. “My men’s,” he corrected with surprising steadiness. “And witch’s.”

With a flick of Harry’s wand, the pantry doors opened, revealing a line of jars and tins and bags stacked neatly like soldiers. Sirius moved with surprising confidence, locating the flour and cocoa, the dried raspberries, and the enchanted chocolate that melted perfectly under low heat. Baking had never been his forte—he was more the type to charm the oven to do the stirring for him—but there was something meditative in the process. The measuring, the pouring, the slow melting of butter, all of it grounded him in a way few things did.

As they worked, Harry asked questions—not the intrusive kind, but the ones that gave Sirius space to think. To unravel the knots in his chest. He spoke of how Severus had shivered beneath his hands, how Hermione had looked at him like he was something soft instead of something broken. How, for the first time in a very long time, he felt wanted without needing to prove himself. Wanted for who he was, not what he had survived.

By the time the muffins were in the oven, the entire kitchen had been transformed into something warm and fragrant, steeped in the aroma of baked raspberries and rich, dark chocolate. The scent clung to the air like an old lullaby, comforting and nostalgic, stirring memories Sirius didn’t know he still carried—of safe kitchens, of laughter behind closed doors, of something that felt almost like home.

He collapsed into a chair with a weary sort of satisfaction, a dusting of flour smudged across his jumper and a streak of melted chocolate painted high on his cheekbone. His hands, stained and sticky, rested uselessly on his thighs as he stared at the oven door, watching the rising batter through the glass like it might offer answers to the questions roiling in his chest.

He wasn’t fixed, and nothing about this was simple. But for the first time in what felt like forever, Sirius didn’t feel like he was adrift in his own skin. There was something anchoring in the act of making something sweet for someone else—someone he wanted, someone he might just love. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t a love spell. Maybe it didn’t need to be.

Perhaps this—this quiet intention, this shared act of care—was the start of something steadier. Something real. Something that could hold.

Grimmauld Place - 2001 - Harry

Harry was having what could only be described as an excellent day. He had passed his final Auror exam, the culmination of years of study and fieldwork, and been granted the rest of the day off in celebration. That alone would’ve been enough to put him in a good mood. But the day had only improved. He'd bumped into George during lunch, stolen a lingering snog between takeaway stalls at the market, and then picked up bags of food for the celebratory dinner he’d planned with Hermione, George, Percy, Luna, and Lavender.

Flooing home from the Leaky Cauldron, bags clutched in his arms and cheeks still warm from George’s kiss, he hadn’t expected to be ambushed by Sirius. His godfather, a whirlwind of nervous energy and chaotic charm, had all but yanked him through Grimmauld Place like a man on a mission. What followed was a tidal wave of emotional over-sharing, full of stammered confessions and poorly concealed yearning. Harry had stood there, eyebrows climbing higher with every revelation, as Sirius blurted out his feelings for both Severus Snape and Hermione Granger like it was a sudden epiphany he couldn’t contain a moment longer.

Confused, overwhelmed, and frankly still processing his own very new relationship, Harry had done the only reasonable thing—he’d rolled up his sleeves and helped Sirius make Severus’s favourite muffins: raspberry and chocolate, apparently, a combination that made the former Potions Master melt. Sirius had been jittery and intense the entire time, stirring with too much force and measuring everything with the anxiety of a man trying to impress a god.

Now, as they sat at the table, a fresh plate of muffins cooling between them and steaming mugs of coffee in their hands, Sirius looked like he was moments from self-combustion. He was twitching slightly, his leg bouncing under the table, fingers drumming an erratic rhythm against his cup. Harry sipped his drink and tried not to laugh.

The moment the front door creaked open, Sirius froze. A breath later, Hermione’s laugh floated through the house, light and unguarded, and it filled the air like sunlight cracking through storm clouds. Harry hadn’t realised how much he missed that sound until now. For months, her laughter had been dimmed by grief and burdened silence, and hearing it again felt like a piece of her had finally returned.

Sirius remained stiff beside him, eyes locked on the door as if expecting it to burst open with judgement. Harry pressed his lips together, suppressing a chuckle. A few beats later, the kitchen door swung wide and Hermione stepped in, hair wild from the breeze and cheeks pink with fresh air. She spotted Harry first, her smile immediate and warm, but when her gaze landed on the muffins, her entire face lit up like a lumos spell.

Trailing behind her, Severus rolled himself into the kitchen, offering a distracted greeting. His eyes fell on the plate in the centre of the table, narrowing with suspicion. "What are those?" he asked, his voice carrying that familiar sceptical edge. His gaze flicked from the muffins to Sirius, who was now fixated on the floor with the intensity of someone hoping to disappear into it.

Hermione leaned against the counter, her shoulders quivering slightly as she bit her lip to keep the laughter from spilling out. Her eyes sparkled with barely restrained amusement as she watched the awkward dance unfolding in front of her.

"Raspberry and chocolate muffins," Harry offered, his voice light with mirth as he cast a sideways glance at his godfather. "Sirius made them."

Severus wheeled himself forward, the quiet whirr of the chair the only sound as he approached the table. His face was a mask of calculated neutrality, but his eyes—dark, sharp—gave away his confusion as they flicked between the muffins and the man who now seemed intent on studying the floor tiles.

"You made them?" he asked, voice low and narrowed with suspicion, as if waiting for the punchline of a joke at his expense.

Sirius shifted in his seat, hands twitching at the edge of the table as if debating whether to stand or vanish entirely. He tilted his head just enough to glance at Severus through a fall of unkempt hair and gave a single nod, barely perceptible.

Severus’s brows drew together, the corners of his mouth tightening. "Why? Hermione and I were going to get dessert," he said, the words clipped with confusion and something else—uncertainty, maybe, or the faintest flicker of hope.

Harry groaned dramatically, dropping his head into his hands as if the weight of their mutual ineptitude had finally crushed him. "Honestly," he muttered, voice muffled, "you’re both hopeless."

Hermione, now openly giggling, reached into her enchanted bag and began pulling out miniature tubs of ice cream with a practiced ease, arranging them neatly on the counter as if the simple act might smooth over the tension thickening the air. Her voice was soft, fond, carrying a note of amusement as she said, "He made them for you, love." It wasn’t an explanation in the traditional sense, but it held all the truth needed in that moment.

Severus froze mid-motion, blinking once, then twice, as if unsure he had heard correctly. His brow creased in puzzlement, and the guardedness in his eyes deepened. "What? Why?" he asked, the question leaving his lips with the breathless disbelief of someone not used to being the recipient of such gestures.

Sirius sat with the rigid posture of a man bracing for impact, his jaw tight and his eyes fixed on an invisible spot somewhere near his boots. Every line of his body screamed tension, as if he might bolt or unravel at any second. The silence grew heavier, dragging out between them until it settled like mist.

Harry, watching the scene with a mix of frustration and barely contained amusement, finally huffed and threw his hands in the air. "Because he wants to snog you," he said, voice matter-of-fact yet gleefully provocative.

Both Sirius and Severus whipped their heads toward him, twin expressions of alarm blooming across their faces—horrified, scandalised, utterly flustered. Hermione had to duck behind the pantry door, clutching her middle as helpless laughter overtook her, her shoulders shaking with the force of it.

But then, with a breath that trembled more from courage than nerves, Severus leaned forward and brushed a kiss against Sirius’s cheek. It was not accidental or rushed, but a deliberate, almost reverent act—quiet as snowfall, and just as startling in its gentleness.

Sirius froze. His eyes widened with surprise, then softened as a dazed, disbelieving smile spread across his face like the first light of morning cutting through a long, storm-tossed night. "You’re welcome," he murmured back, voice almost lost beneath the beat of his own heartbeat.

Reaching for a muffin, Severus broke off a piece with slow, thoughtful precision and placed it on his tongue. He chewed deliberately, the flavours blooming across his palate, and after a beat, he gave a quiet nod of approval. "They’re excellent," he said, the words simple but rich with meaning. "Is there coffee to go with them?"

Sirius jolted to his feet like he’d been lit from within, the nervous energy that had gripped him suddenly giving way to an eager sense of purpose. "Yeah, yeah—I’ll get it," he said quickly, already halfway across the kitchen to the waiting pot.

Harry grinned into his mug as he watched Sirius kiss Hermione’s cheek and whisper something that made her blush all the way to her ears. There was something beautiful about it, this strange, tangled web of affection they were trying to navigate.

The door creaked open again just as Sirius was pouring coffee, and in strode George, followed closely by Percy. George's voice boomed before he was fully through the threshold, eyes sparkling with mischief and mischief alone.

“I’m telling you, brother,” George proclaimed to Percy with the sort of unbothered bravado that only he could manage, “I declared in the middle of the Burrow that I’m now shagging Harry, and Mum looked like she was about to Avada me—and still had the audacity to call me her favourite son.”

Harry, caught mid-sip of his coffee, choked and turned a spectacular shade of crimson. He sputtered, nearly dropping the mug as all coherent thought evaporated from his brain.

Hermione let out a squeak of surprise and fumbled the ice cream tub in her hands, barely catching it before it hit the floor, her wide eyes swinging toward Harry, who looked very much like he wished the ground would swallow him whole.

Sirius doubled over with a bark of laughter, one hand bracing himself against the counter as he tried to catch his breath. The sound echoed through the kitchen, loud and delighted.

But it was Severus’s reaction that drew everyone up short. The stoic man, who had for years perfected a look of perpetual disapproval, quirked one eyebrow and let a slow, unmistakable smirk curl across his mouth—equal parts wicked and entertained. It was, somehow, more alarming than if he’d burst into song.